A New Life
by Varsai
Summary: The attack during the chunin exams works and the rookie nine, team gai and the sand siblings take lead the remaining children, academy students, genin and some chunin to a new village. They soon find out that a new village must be forged in blood.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Death of Konoha

Chapter 1: Death in Konoha

Gaara remained calm, Sasuke's arm was in his shoulder, but he remained calm. He sent out an arm of sand and squeezed the other boy into submission.

"Winner Gaara by knock out!" Gaara released his hold, he didn't want to fight right now his mind was racing, but he had to, Naruto stood in front of him kunai drawn at the ready an angry look on his face that said you just stepped over the line. Kakashi and the Konoha genin came down to gather Sasuke so he would not get hurt.

Gaara was glad he had kept his sand shield up because the boy charged in with surprising force. He saw Naruto's face in the hole that Sasuke's attack had made.

"I'm going to make you pay for hurting my friends!" It sounded like two voices talking at once, for the first time in his life Gaara was afraid that he would lose and die. The boy outside of the sand began to claw at the wall to which the crowd responded with cheers, they had just seen their pride genin hurt and wanted revenge even if it was Naruto who they were cheering for.

Gaara was assaulted several times by waves of demonic chakra; some actually got through and slammed him around. He knew there was something different about this opponent. They were the same but completely different. 'Why, why does he fight me to save them and not just to kill me?' He thought.

Naruto was losing confidence in himself, he wasn't sure he could win, he didn't even know if he stood a chance.

'What's going on here?' Kakashi thought while walking towards the arena to retrieve Sasuke. 'Since when can Naruto use the Kyuubi's chakra at will? Ebisu-sensei isn't such a fool to try and teach him that. If it went bad, the chakra could backfire and destroy the whole village. How did he learn to do that?'

Sakura, Ino and Chouji quickly left their seats so the teacher could lay the wounded boy down. Even then his mind was still racing with everything he had just seen. He knew that Sasuke would be in more danger in the first round, that was why Kakashi had decided to train the Uchiha himself, leaving Naruto, who needed to increase his basics, with an excellent teacher. 'Don't tell me he actually learned to use it on his own.' Kakashi almost shuddered at the mere thought. 'True, Naruto is a quick learner when he puts everything he has into it, but this would be a bit much. A dense guy like him would never think of training where he has to use Kyuubi's chakra.'

Taking a single look at Gai, who only nodded back, Kakashi, knew that his long time rival was thinking the same thing.

'And more then that; these last few minutes a lot has happened. Gaara turning out to be an actual jinchuuriki, Sasuke having used his Curse Seal again and finally; Naruto suddenly using Kyuubi's Chakra. I guess Sasuke still doesn't have enough control over himself. Speaking of Jinchiruku's, how come Gaara's been so quiet the last couple of minutes? And Naruto as well.'

Meanwhile, up in the seats for the Kage's Orochimaru was beginning to get really interested. 'Sasuke-kun wasn't able to win after all, but the Uzumaki boy actually stopped the crushing sand of that Gaara. He's used the Kyuubi's chakra twice now, I'm sure that my seal has been removed. But now I'm starting to get interested. Have you surpassed Sasuke-kun for the time being? Show me and show Sasuke-kun. Yes, show him that you've grown and send him right into my arms!'

Having trouble containing himself, Orochimaru gave a small chuckle. Seeing the surprised look on his old teacher's face, he quickly made up an answer.

"My apologies, Hokage-sama. I did not mean to sound rude, but this is truly a golden opportunity. Not only has Gaara defeated a member of the Uchiha clan, he will now also fight against the man who defeated a Hyuuga. His victory will truly be a blessing for the Sand."

"I see. But do not count on victory yet, the fight hasn't even started yet."

'Maybe, Sensei, maybe. But I doubt that a piece of trash like him could defeat Gaara.'

Kakashi motioned to Naruto to join him. "Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto spoke up, actually sounding a bit timid for once. "Tell me. Do you think this guy is strong? He defeated Sasuke and Fuzzy-brows. I'm… I'm scared. This guy's the same as me, but he's so much stronger. He's always gotten by on his own, unlike me. What should I do?"

"Well, Naruto." Kakashi started, trying to think up an answer to his question. "I will admit that this guy is no pushover. He's powerful, but that doesn't always mean that he's strong. You have every right to be scared of someone as fearsome as him. But tell me Naruto," as they both turned at looked at each other again, Kakashi continued.

"Since when do you run from your problems? What happened to the brave and stupid shinobi that attacked a swordsman of the Mist without fear?"

Wincing at the harsh voice of his Sensei, Naruto tried to speak up.

"But, Sensei. This guy… he's…"

"You just said that he's the same as you didn't you? Doesn't that mean that you're the only one that can fight him on equal grounds?"

"Huh? No, I couldn't fight a guy like him, he's…"

"He's someone that has hurt your comrades and right now you're the only one that can beat him. Are you telling me that you'll give up on them and let Gaara go unpunished? If so you disappoint me."

"I guess you're right, Sensei. I wouldn't make much of a Hokage if I did that huh." Naruto answered.

Turning around, Naruto walked towards the group of Shinobi and Sasuke, who was still lying on the seats. Seeing the strange, almost grim look on his face, the group instantly went quiet. Sasuke stirred a bit as he struggled to see Naruto's face. He had already come to and was now looking at Naruto.

"Hey Naruto." Ino said suddenly. "Don't tell me you're going up against that guy as well? He's a monster! Even Sasuke-kun couldn't defeat him!"

"A monster huh." he answered gloomy, almost whispering. "I guess you're right."

Stepping past Ino, he walked up to Sasuke and spoke up. "Sasuke. I…I'm sorry, but it looks like," he struggled with his words suddenly. "We won't have our fight after all. I'm sorry." And with that, he suddenly turned around and walked down the steps that would lead him into the arena down below.

Surprised by the dark tone in his words, all the other shinobi looked at his back as he walked down the steps.

"What the hell was that all about?" Kiba said as soon as Naruto was out of their sight.

"Naruto-kun, he…" Hinata started,

"He doesn't think he'll come back." Sakura finished for her.

"What?!" the other's all shouted.

No-one noticed that Kakashi still hadn't moved from where he had spoken to Naruto, or the fact that Gai had moved himself and now stood next to his rival.

"Why on earth did you do that Kakashi? The boy's too scared to fight this opponent. He'll get killed!" the loud man almost yelled.

"I know Gai, but there's a reason I said Naruto should fight him. You already knew didn't you? That boy, Gaara, and Naruto are the same. They are both Jinchuuriki who have been hated and feared throughout their lives. And it's because Gaara has always survived on his own, Naruto got scared. He's forgotten the meaning of his own strength and only looks at the opponent's. And right now, with the way Gaara is, Naruto is the only one who has the ability to defeat him. You saw it didn't you? He used Kyuubi's chakra to save Sasuke. As he is now, he probably doesn't stand a chance against Gaara, but if he were to overcome his fear Naruto would show him all the corners of the ring."

"I still think it's too much of a risk. There's too big a chance that he stays scared and can't fight at all. And if that happens, he'll be killed without a fight."

"Then you don't know Uzumaki Naruto. And I don't want to hear you about risky tactics."

"Let the Semi-final battle BEGIN!"

As soon as the words left Genma's mouth, Gaara rushed forward attacking for the kill right away. His sand arm hit Naruto before he could even react.

"DIE!"

"Aargh!"

Before Naruto had even realized it, he had landed, feet first, on the wall of the arena. The force of Gaara's attack had sent him flying all across the stadium, just like it had done with Sasuke. But Naruto, unlike Sasuke, could still move and his reflexes, honed by months of training, allowed him to flip in mid air thus causing him to land on his feet and minimize the damage. As soon as Naruto looked up though, Gaara was close enough for their noses to be touching. Again, Naruto couldn't move before Gaara slammed him into the walls. And this time, Naruto had no way of reducing the damage.

As Gaara drew back his arm to go in for a third strike, Naruto looked up at the stands. Kakashi was still standing there, just like how he stood during their talk. But now, all the others, with Sasuke leaning heavily on Kiba and Chouji, had gathered as well to watch the fight. Seeing the look on his teacher's face, Naruto thought back to the words that Kakashi had said just moments before. Moments that felt like an eternity to him.

"_You just said that he's the same as you didn't you? Doesn't that mean that you're the only one that can fight him on equal grounds?"_

'I was right. He IS too strong for me to fight with. I can't hope to defeat someone like this.' Naruto thought as the giant arm slammed into him for the third time now. He could feel the walls behind him cracking under the power.

'Someone like this, he's too strong! He's always lived on his own! I know how terrible it feels but he's always stayed there, never seeking the help of others. I can't hope to win against him!'

'Now then, Naruto-kun.' Orochimaru thought. 'Show me what you are capable of. You could control Kyuubi's power to the point where even a Hyuuga was no match and you deflected Gaara's attack. Show me if you are a threat to Akatsuki! Show me if you are a threat to ME!'

Up in the stands, the people were in a variety of opinions for the fight. Naruto could clearly hear people shouting at him to get up and fight back, while others where yelling with glee he was about to be killed in this tournament. Yet a third group of people was yelling that he had to get up and defeat Gaara for the honor of Konoha and to avenge everything he's done to Sasuke. And all of the shinobi that actually knew Naruto and had seen what Gaara was capable of were yelling at him to give up and surrender so he could at least survive.

'They have no idea what its like to be like us; from where they are they can't imagine what the bottom would be like.' He thought scornfully.

Shikamaru was standing, looking at the fight below. In his mind, he was reviewing the conversation he and Naruto had with Gaara the day before, back in the hospital. He had, back then, already realized that he would stand no chance against Gaara and, if Naruto's bluff was right, Gaara was facing the only opponent in the village that could fight him. But Gaara was winning big time.

As Naruto looked up to see Gaara storming at him again, he suddenly saw something behind him that reminded Naruto of something that had happened almost a year ago. In his mind, he was suddenly back in a flower field, a field that was in the country of the Wave. He could see a person standing in front of him, talking with a small smile on his face. If Naruto had not known it was a boy, he would mistake him for a girl all over again.

It was all that Naruto could remember about the words. Before he had time to consider more words, Gaara attacked him again. Going for a different attack pattern this time, Gaara punched Naruto into the sky before jumping after him. He continued the attack by quickly kicking Naruto in mid air. The kick, although not executed by a monster-shaped limb, was still powered up by the Chakra of Shukaku and caused Naruto to be slammed into the audience.

"I have real strength, my friends; you can't beat me no matter how hard you try! I'm fighting to defend them, to defend Konoha! Against me you can't stand a chance!"

'I'll have to summon the frog-boss.' Quickly flashing through the seals in the order he had memorized already, he quickly bit the thumb of his right hand for the blood. Slamming his hand down on the ground he yelled the jutsu's name. "Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" In front of him was a toad, but it wasn't boss toad. Instead it was a frog his size with a katana on each side of its belt. 'It will have to do.'

As Naruto yelled out his new jutsu's name, all the higher ranked shinobi looked dumbstruck. It was quite common knowledge among the jounins how a summoning technique worked. It required the writing of a contract with the animals you would be summoning as well as a mass of chakra. It was almost unheard of for anything below chunin to be able to use a technique like that. But of course that was not what had most adult worried right then. Every single person that knew the truth, whether they knew Naruto in person or they had only heard the rumors about him, was thinking and fearing the same thing. 'Did he make a contract with the foxes?'

'What the?' Kakashi thought. 'Since when can he do a summoning technique? What did Ebisu-sensei teach him in this month? Controlling the Kyuubi's chakra, using summoning, the more I think about it, the less likely it seems for Ebisu-sensei to have taught him something like that. But then, who was it?'

'What the…' Kakashi thought. 'I expected a lot of things to appear but not a frog. There's only 1 person that can give the summoning contract for frogs.'

Taking a quick look at Gai gave Kakashi all the info he needed. They were thinking along the same lines.

"It looks like Jiraiya-sama is back." Kakashi said

"Yes. There's no other option. He's the only one who could give the summon contract for the frogs."

"jir-who-ja?" Kiba asked a confused look on his face.

"Jiraiya-sama." Tenten said, having come over to check up on Lee mere seconds before.

"He's one of the three Legendary Sannin of Konoha." She continued. "He's the master of Toad-like Ninjutsu. But he left the village about a decade or two ago right? Why's he back now?"

"It is true that he left Konoha a long time ago, but he never became a missing-nin. He has simply gone wandering, but never turned his back on Konoha." Kakashi answered. Only in his thoughts did he continue the sentence.

'But, why would a shinobi like him suddenly return and take Naruto under his wing? He hasn't trained anyone since the Fourth.' Kakashi

"What's going on here?" The frog turned to Naruto and leered. "You are the one who summoned me yes?"

"Yeah I need some help fighting this guy!" He said seriously as he pointed at Gaara. "Hold him off until I can summon Gamabunta." He used the toad's proper name thinking the toad in front of him might take offense at his nickname. The frog nodded and pulled out the swords and leapt towards Gaara who simply held off the toad using sand until the toad began using wind to extend the cuts and Gaara started bleeding much to his horror.

"Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" Again he had failed; a small look alike of Gamabunta was before him this time.

"Hey you keep summoning us! Can't you do anything right?" The small toad asked.

"Why do I have to mess it up now? A frog like this is useless." Naruto thought out loud.

"Hey! I'm not useless!" the frog responded, his pride obviously hurt. "I'll let you know I'm a powerful being, but I'm not experienced enough to fight against something like this yet. Who are you trying to get any way?" as he said the last part, the frog turned his head away, not daring to look at Naruto.

"So, in other words, you're useless." Naruto simply said."Boss toad Gamabunta-sama." Naruto said answering the toad's question and gathering more of the fox's chakra getting ready for another summoning. This time it worked, the crowd gawked as the giant toad appeared in the center of the ring.

Gaara couldn't believe what he was seeing, frogs! He was being beaten with frogs! He felt himself slipping, he had no control and the sand covered his entire body and everything faded into black. The demon attacked the smallest opponent who was saved by Naruto in the nick of time.

Kakashi had a smile on his face that wouldn't go away; he couldn't believe that Naruto of all people had just summoned Gamabunta.

Orochimaru had done something that had given himself away, he had shown anger at seeing the frog not the technique, and it was then that the Third gave a few hidden hand signals to his own bodyguards who aimed kunai at those guarding Orochimaru. The Third prepared a Jutsu of his own; he would seal Orochimaru so that his evil could never harm another person.

The giant frog he was standing on reacted as well, although in a way no one, except maybe the Third, had expected. As the king of all frogs looked up to see who was standing on his head, expecting an explanation, Naruto's old confidence came back to him.

"Alright! The results of my training finally show! Now we're talk-"

"**You again!**" the frog interrupted, sounding annoyed. "**What's with you? Whatta ya want?**"

Before Naruto could answer, Gaara, in his full Shukaku form, moved his tail, earning him Gamabunta's attention.

'**If I remember correctly, that's Shukaku of the sands.'** He thought. **'Not an easy opponent, even for someone like me.'**

"Toad-boss!" Naruto exclaimed, addressing Gamabunta by his own version of the frog's title. Please fight with me! I'm counting on yo-" He didn't get to finish his sentence as Gamabunta again interrupted him.

"**Hell No!**"

"What!" Naruto exclaimed. "But why?"

"**Last time you said you'd make me you underling. A boss's supposed to help out his underlings in trouble, ain't he? That's the family law. And I know I said I'd make you my underling last time, but we haven't even exchanged drinks to seal the deal, so…"**

He let the rest of the sentence hang in the air, hoping the blonde would understand what he meant. Meanwhile, his thoughts were on a completely different track.

'**Why should I have to do anything for the sake of this pain in the butt…'**

"No way! I'm not of age yet, I can't drink Sake!" Naruto exclaimed. Suddenly he felt a weight land on his head that spoke up.

"Now don't go saying that." The smaller frog Naruto had summoned before spoke from his new resting place, sitting atop Naruto's head.

"Will you listen to the fellow already? I was saved by this one Pops."

"Huh? Pops? You mean that you're his son?" Naruto's question went unanswered as Gamabunta instead focused his attention on his son.

"**What are you doing here Gamakichi?!**"

"I was bored so I came out to play." The small amphibian answered before pointing his hand towards Gaara. "But more importantly, that guy tried to bully me!"

"**Say what!**" Gamabunta exclaimed, his voice hard enough for half the stadium to flinch.

"But this guy here saved me. He's pretty interesting!" Gamakichi continued.

"**Tell you what kid.**" Gamabunta exclaimed as he drew his dagger. "**I'll recognize you as my underling. And I'll show you all about the Family Law!**"

"I have a plan boss-toad!" He yelled up to the toad that turned to him, he jumped up and onto the frogs head and began to whisper the plan into the toad's ear.

The toad's tongue shot out at Gaara who was surrounded by sand again, the sword wielding toad disappeared knowing it was no longer needed. Naruto jumped to the ground and the tongue retracted and the toad drew out his sword. He slashed into the sand body and cut it in half, waking Gaara at the sudden loss of sand covering him. He put up a sand shield. The crowd was cheering insanely and Naruto gave them the same cold look they had always given him.

"It's odd," Naruto said loudly so that Gaara could hear him, "that they cheer for me now, when every other day of my life they looked at me with those eyes, those hating eyes that are so cold. You know those eyes better than your own too don't you? I hate they way they look at me, I try to cover it up by laughing and playing jokes but in the end when they look at me it's always the same isn't it?"

The people in the stadium always listened to what the ninja said, they always loved the drama it added to the fights, this time however they felt guilt, the fox-boy was talking about them for once they were the ones who did something horrible for the past eleven years they had made that boys life a living hell and they knew it. For once they saw him for what every genin they had ever seen fighting truly was, a child who was becoming a soldier so they could live their normal lives.

Gaara's sand wall came down slightly, just enough to see Naruto's face, no red chakra, and no demon energy was needed for this fight, the wall turned to dust and the gourd fell to the floor. He clenched his fists remembering all of the hateful looks as he grew up. Naruto had been accepted, eventually he knew just by looking at him, because in the blonde ninja's eyes he saw acceptance. The first real smile he had in a long time came to his face as he ran forward and punched Naruto in the gut and felt a fist slam into his side.

'I knew you couldn't be pure evil.' Naruto thought as he punched Gaara in the face and got a fist to his own in return.

"It's always the worst on your birthday right? No one else celebrates with you and you are left all alone." Gaara said ducking a hit.

"Even when I got a team they didn't like me, they even said they hated me right to my face. We shared our likes and dislikes and I know I was on both of their lists. They were raised that way, it disgusts me. My sensei said that I would be better just giving up on being a ninja; I wasn't cut out to be one. In the month we had to train he just pushed me off on someone else and trained golden-boy Sasuke." Naruto said angrily punching Gaara as hard as he could. Kakashi looked down at his feet not wanting to look at Naruto. Sakura had tears in her eyes as she thought about how mean she had been to Naruto. Sasuke smiled knowing that he had messed up the worse, but he knew that he and Naruto were friends.

"When I was young my father sent my uncle to kill me, he was the only one who ever cared about me. He was the first person I ever killed." He hit Naruto off balance, everyone who was watching was stunned, it was a violent fight in the beginning but now it was nothing but a fist fight.

"Interesting turn of events, eh, sensei?" The Hokage heard from behind him, he hadn't seen Orochimaru move, the clone in the seat turned into snakes and a series of loud bangs could be heard as the invasion started. A blade went through the Third before he could turn around.

"Damn it Orochimaru!" He said as he jumped off of the blade and into the open stadium. Kakashi and Gai reacted first jumping towards the shattered window. Hiashi Hyuuga followed, he and Neji had heard the last fight had started and returned to the stadium.

The giant toad heard snakes crashing down the walls protecting the village and jumped into action. The Hokage landed between the two boys who immediately went to him, they were joined by Sasuke, Shikamaru and Neji.

"You boys need to get the students and other children in the village, get as many low rank ninja and children as you can away from the village. You are all promoted to chunin, Naruto you are in charge get them to safety." The old man tried to get up but could not. "Hurry go, you must save them." He implored and they followed his instructions by gathering the younger ninja in the crowd and moving out from there, Naruto was the only one who stayed.

"Old man…Hokage-sama…You can't die not like this." He felt tears begin to form as he clutched the old man not caring about the fight forming around him.

"Naruto…your so much like your father all of the sudden…your a lot more mature after today's fights aren't you? Naruto I must tell you before I die…your father he was the forth Hokage, Minato Namikaze. I want you to remember that when you protect something important to you...a ninja's true strength will manifest!. I give you my will of fire Naruto." His eyes closed and he began to grow cold, Naruto began to sob as he watched his living hero die.

"I'll remember forever Hokage-sama." He got up and took the body with him, he had something to get something they would need besides untrained ninja.

Kakashi, Gai and Hiashi all stood before Orochimaru ready to kill and be killed. Orochimaru smiled knowing the old man was finally dead.

All around Konoha battle raged and people died, civilians mostly as first but then ninja from both sides began to join the dead.

A/N: I hope you liked the first chapter. This is just another of those Ideas that came to me and refused to go away. I'm currently working on chapter three (I just came to edit this one a little) I'm looking for a beta to check my stuff so I you want to help just say so in a review or pm me…


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Death of Konoha

Chapter 2: Death of Konoha

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, places or Jutsu. I do own the story line I'm posting so please ask for permission before using it.

The first four seconds of Orochimaru's attack showed that he was going in for quick kill with as much collateral damage as he could make, he leveled a city block with the first Jutsu he used. Kakashi already had his sharingan activated, Gai was preparing to open the seven gates and maybe even the eighth, Hiashi had gone in for the kill and to hold the freak off as long as he could.

He had closed off a few of the chakra points but Orochimaru was quicker and far more flexible than anyone he had ever fought before. He first felt the sword but between his ribs but he kept fighting closing all of the points in one arm and both legs before three snakes bit into his skin their poison killing him slowly.

The snakes then went for Kakashi who smiled accepting his fate, it had been coming for years he had just been waiting, he charged a chidori in both hands and leapt forward using the lightning blades to ruin the precious arms of his opponent completely to the shoulders, and then he just held him still not letting him move an inch. Gai opened the eighth gate and began hitting the unmoving snake-man being turned into pulp of blood and gore, he continued to smash the stuff until he ran out of chakra, and Kakashi then burnt the remains making sure that nothing of the sannin had survived.

"Good bye Kakashi, it's been good fighting with you." Gai gave one last good-guy smile and fell to the floor. Kakashi slumped to the floor the poison slowly killing him.

"Obito, Rin I'll be joining you soon." Kakashi looked at they sky one last time and smiled.

Gamabunta had easily beheaded the three headed snake, he now surveyed Konoha which was burning and exploding, the Hokage monument had been destroyed but he saw some spots of hope before he left the town.

Shikamaru had gotten to Chouji and Ino first and they had gotten every child in the stands before Orochimaru destroyed them. They were currently watching their sensei gather civilians with Kurenai Yuhi who left the village with their group.

"Take the people we have now to our old training spot, I'll tell the others where to meet." Shikamaru ordered taking command. As he ran off to find the others he ran into a tall man with long white hair.

"Hey kid!" The tall man said to him. "Your Naruto's friend right? How did he do in the exam?" He asked killing a sand ninja with a shriken.

"Yes I know him, he won…sort of…then all of this happened. The Third Hokage told some of us to save as many low rank ninja and children as we could. Then he…died." Shikamaru said sadly. The tall man nodded.

"The village is lost get as many people as you can out, I'm going to find Tsunade, and you will need a medic ninja. Don't worry I'll be able to find you after all I am the incredible Jiraiya!" He posed and jumped away.

Sasuke had run into Shikamaru who told him where to take the people following him, he had run into Iruka who had been going into the secret passage out of Konoha but he had given the children over to Sasuke as soon as the group was attacked, Sasuke had to drag the Third's grandson along with him to make sure he didn't join the fighting.

Neji and Ten Ten were attacked they were told of the meeting spot they got as many genin and chunin as they could. They were attacked again and several chunin were killed before they could kill the ten sound soldiers that had attacked them.

Gaara used as much chakra as he dared to keep the large group of people he was defending alive. Unfortunately the sand was stretched to thin and he couldn't gather enough and many holes began appearing in his defense. His brother and sister killed many of the ones who got in but nearly twenty ninja were killed in the melee.

Sakura had Shino were taking Hinata, Kiba and Lee to safety and were guarded by members of the Aburame and Inuzuka clans, several of whom died, the children and young animal familiars of these clans were taken with the youngest of the clans.

The Hyuuga clan abandoned their homes and began to form a defense for those trying to get out of the city, many died and soon only children remained. They joined the ones fleeing the city.

Those who did not know where to go or refused to go with those trying to save them died fighting numerous enemies who outmatched them.

Naruto placed the body of the Hokage in his room and began to gather scrolls, books, weapons anything and everything ninja. He had clones doing the same all over town as well as gathering people and helping them escape to where the low rank ninja were currently hiding.

"Naruto we need to get going, we're losing the war! We lost a lot of people before Orochimaru was taken down. Kakashi and Gai are dead, they killed him." Sasuke said coming up behind the original, he knew it would be the one gathering more than he could reasonably carry and then some. "Konoha is being destroyed; the Hokage monument has been destroyed. It's all gone." The blond was silent for a moment absorbing the information.

"Help me Sasuke, grab as much as you can, then burn the building down!" He ordered.

Sasuke nodded understanding the Hokage had a wellspring of information here better for it to be destroyed than in enemy hands. "Get going, I'll take you to the meeting spot."

They ran into the night avoiding the fighting, few leaf ninja remained mostly Anbu and strong jonin. The village was burning, everything was destroyed and there were only more explosions. Naruto stood in front of the entire group, most were younger than he was or the same age, numbering more than seven hundred. The clones had handed out supplies and gone to fight as long as they could, which wasn't long since they were tired. Naruto let out a deep sigh and held his hand up to gain everyone's attention.

"Remember this night for the rest of your life, remember this night as the night that we lost our village but we gained something tonight, a mission, someday these lands will be reclaimed in the name of those who died today." Naruto said to everyone, he then took one last look at the village and began to run away.

"Naruto, where are we going?" Sasuke asked as soon as he caught up to Naruto.

"I don't, where is there to go?" Naruto asked frustrated and angry.

"We have to leave the country, but first we need to get more supplies and weapons. I know a place where we can get those follow me." Sasuke took the lead and Naruto followed.

Naruto knew that Kakashi was dead; he quietly mourned the man he was proud to call sensei, he knew that Konoha had been destroyed but the true strength of the village he called home was not in the place but in its people. Sasuke mourned him in this way also, but also for the loss of the only other sharingan user he knew to be on his side, he too thought of the destroyed town but it only made him want to cause pain…immense pain. Sakura was trying to forget that her parents, her sensei and almost everyone and everything that was important to her had just been taken and destroyed.

Lee had held his tears at the knowledge that Gai was dead, he had to be strong because he was the one who was walking with the children, he remained strong for them. Neji had just remained quite while thinking about the death of the man who had taught him to use the soft fist style more effectively than any Hyuuga had ever done, the man who had let him stay at his home for weeks on end to escape the gloom of the life of a branch member. Ten Ten tried to pass it off and comfort her teammates but she mourned the man just as much as they did if not more, he had taken the place of her vacant father and had been the one who taught her that the only person she would need to be better than was herself.

Konohamaru had stayed with Naruto as much as he could, he silently wept when he thought the blonde could not see or hear him. He would always open his eyes to see the smiling blonde flash him a grin that said 'everything will be alright, just leave it to me!' he trusted that voice and tried not to think of the sorrow that filled his heart.

All of the young children looked to Lee for guidance, he was happy and smiled, his every action and comment seemed like a joke to them. He kept them happy during the day but at night nothing could stop the memories of death and loss.

It was three days before they reached where Sasuke had lead them, an abandoned city with thin air and an odd musty smell. It was an entire hour for the entire group to reach the city, Lee and Neji took up the rear due to their injuries.

"So what is here?" Naruto asked quietly to Sasuke.

"Weapons and medicine the things that we need to get wherever we are going." He again to the lead and this time only the rookie nine followed. "This is a weapons house that my family used."

They heard a soft sound coming from behind them and saw two cats walking towards them.

"It's been a long time Denka, Hina." Sasuke said greeting the two felines.

"Ha I knew it, it's that Sasuke boy." One said.

"What are you doing here?" The other asked.

"We need supplies for travel, and we then need to set up an entire village after that." Sasuke answered.

"Did you bring any goodies?" The cat asked.

"Of course…Here's a bottle of catnip." He held out the bottle and the cat began walking away.

"Ok follow me." They followed until they got to a room which smelled like cat, not anything else just cat smells.

"Granny cat, we need supplies, a lot of them…" Sasuke began saying as soon as they walked in, an old woman looked up and smiled.

"You can't be going after your brother already can you?" She implored, he actually hadn't thought about how much current events had hampered his plans.

"No, Konoha has been destroyed, we are guarding a group of academy students, genin, and a few chunin, and we don't know if any jonin or Anbu have survived. The Hokage is dead but we gathered as many scrolls, weapons and a large amount of money." She old woman nodded and grinned at the last part.

"How much do you need?" She questioned him.

"Food for seven hundred people for at least a month, weapons, and anything you have about Jutsu. I know how much you charge for each so don't over charge us." The old lady laughed at this.

"I wouldn't think of it." She snapped her fingers and several of the ninja cats left to get something. "You will need carts; they will take them to those waiting outside. As for food," she snapped again and three more left, "They will get those. Now for weapons please get as much as you need." She motioned towards several summoning scrolls which had tags saying what they held. The group bought as much as they could, using almost half of their money, then asked for a map.

"There are several places we can go; I'm just not sure which is the best." Shikamaru said looking at the map. Naruto looked at the Fire Country wishing he didn't have to make this decision.

"I have an idea," He pointed at a small island just off of the fire country, "Wave Country, we have friends there, they don't have a hidden village, we can stage an invasion into the Fire County easily, there are islands and small countries with no villages that we can get jobs from." He finished and looked at the others.

"It sounds good." Shikamaru said broadly.

"We may have to fight Hidden Mist ninja, but then we have fought some of their best haven't we?" Sasuke said then added. "I say we go."

"It is one of the best choices." Shino agreed. The others agreed and they began to leave. Once outside they saw the twenty large carts that now held scrolls, books, food, weapons, and people.

"How are we supposed to move all of these?" Naruto groaned. They all looked at him and he groaned again but grudgingly made enough clones to pull all of the carts.

The convoy moved out lead by Sasuke, the original Naruto, and Neji who was feeling better after his defeat at Naruto's hands.

In the rear a somber Lee spoke with a lazy Shikamaru as they watched the slowest of the group in front of them.

"I can be of no use when we reach where we are going." Lee said in his pained voice.

"Don't worry before I left with the last group of people in the village I talked to Jiraiya-sama, he said he was going to look for Tsunade, the third sannin, and that they would find us." Shikamaru said walking a little slower and looking at the sky.

"Do you think she can help me?" The large browed boy asked.

"She's the best medic ninja I've ever heard about." Shikamaru said he wasn't sure but he hoped Lee didn't deserve to be injured for the rest of his life.

"You shouldn't be walking." They heard from behind them, they both looked back to see Gaara floating of a cloud of sand, Lee too was lifted into the air. "I'm sorry that I hurt you. I will take care of you until that person you were talking about comes." Lee smiled and accepted the apology.

In the front the three talked about what to do next.

"First we hope that they let us stay, and if they do we hope we can get missions before we run out of money." Neji said using his byakugan to make sure no one was around.

"Then we set up a training center, get stronger while training the younger students." Sasuke added.

"Zabuza must have had somewhere on that island that he stayed, we can find that place and move in. It must be close to the village also." Naruto said trying to come up with a second plan just in case in was needed.

"Yes that is one of the first things we should look for. Also we need to build outposts and boats to keep the area safe. We need to put some of our stronger fighters on the bridge." Neji said thinking about who to put there.

"We need a leader…" Sasuke pointed out. "We all can't lead eventually we will see something differently, we need to elect a leader."

"Naruto was put in charge of the mission and I think that we can agree he is the strongest person here, he would have beaten Gaara if their fight had continued." Neji said matter of factly.

"Ok I guess we can suggest it when we get to the village."

After traveling for several days they reached the bridge, which since they had been there last had been named 'The Great Naruto Bridge'. Sasuke laughed when he saw the name, Neji had to look twice before he believed it, Naruto…Naruto danced…poorly.

"I can't believe they named a bridge after you of all people!" Kiba laughing at the thought of it.

Naruto happily lead the group across the bridge and towards the village. When they reached the village the people there watched them with great interest, not because they hadn't seen ninja before but because they had never seen so many at one time.

"Naruto?" A surprised voice asked. Naruto looked at the speaker, it was Inari who was standing next to Tazuna.

"I'm glad we found you two first," Sasuke began, "our village has been destroyed and we want to move here, if your leader will allow it."

The old man looked surprised at this he looked but it seemed that they were the highest ranking ninja there. He sighed and took out a bottle he felt he would be needing a drink soon. "You came to the right person I think I do need a service only ninja can provide and I can pay, I'm the wealthiest man on the island now, I charge a tax for the use of my bridge you see. Let's go talk in private bring your caravan with you." They followed Tazuna to his house where Sasuke, Lee, Neji, Naruto, Shino and Shikamaru went inside.

"Ok, to begin with you know what happened with Gato and how he controlled everything economically around here. After he left everything was good, money was flowing through the village and everyone was happy. However the Daimyo also gained money. Now he is demanding a tax which is too high for the people to pay. I want you to remove him and I'll take care of the rest. After that you are welcome to stay as long as you need." They agreed and left.

"So who wants to get rid of this guy?" Naruto said in his loud happy voice that he hadn't used since after his fight with Neji.

"Do we have a choice?" Sasuke said shaking his head at Naruto's enthusiasm. "Don't you understand what he meant my 'remove'?" He asked knowing the blonde had no idea.

"He meant kick him out right?" Naruto asked innocently.

"He meant kill him." Sasuke said blandly making the blonde jump in surprise.

"I liked Naruto more when he was serious." Neji stated to no one in particular.

A/N: Ok next chapter they find and break into the Daimyo's stronghold. Then Jiraiya comes to the village. The rookie nine are going to grow up much more quickly than then did in canon due to the fact they are the leaders of three hundred+ people. Another thing I want to bring up is when the story happens, it begins during the Gaara and Sasuke match of the chunin exam right after Sasuke stabs Gaara with the chidori.

Fixed the number of children to go better with the story

Of course I do have some questions.

1) Do you want to be a beta? If so apply here I need one…


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: First Blood, Pact Written In Blood

Chapter 3: First Blood, Pact Written In Blood

Disclaimer: Insert standard disclaimer here

Naruto was trying to not think about how he might have to kill someone on this 'mission'. He had known he would have to kill people since the first day at the academy, Iruka told them that anyone who thought they couldn't do that to leave, but now it was part of the mission.

The others in the group were entertaining similar thoughts. Neji had never killed, he like Naruto had seen people die but never had he killed. In a way he wanted to know what it was like to hold someone else's life in you hands and then extinguish it in front of them. Another part of him dreaded the idea of it, he had watched many people die that day in Konoha many of whom he had known from the Hyuuga branch family.

Shikamaru had seen death, both in battle and in nature, hunting stray wolves that had killed some of his families' deer. He had killed some of the animals but never had he killed a human.

Sasuke had seen death, lots of death his entire family had died in one night and he had seen it over again in his mind. He didn't want to kill people; he had already decided to neutralize his opponents.

Chouji had mixed feeling, he didn't want to kill but he would if his friends were in danger. Kiba thought similar thoughts.

Shino had killed, through his bugs; he had killed ninja, including Konoha genin during the second chunin exam. This would just be more of the same.

They continued silently towards their destination.

Gaara had stayed behind with his brother and sister; they knew that the Konoha ninja did not completely trust them yet. While this was not unexpected, they younger ninja and children didn't care in fact they watched him eagerly as if they expected him to put on a show for them. Rock Lee stood nearby watching the children, for some reason this made Gaara feel a little jealous.

"Gai sensei used to say that the only person who you should compare yourself to is yourself. If you can run one more step today then you did yesterday then you have improved yourself. Never compare yourself to your teammates because they have different strengths then you." Lee was telling one of the children who were now talking to him.

The girls of the rookie nine had been listening and had taken that lesson in.

Hinata thought about how she had always compared herself to her cousin and to what her father wanted her to be like while he was still alive. She smiled a little and for once couldn't wait until she could train tomorrow.

Sakura remembered these words not only for herself but for Naruto and Sasuke who really needed them.

"Who are you?" Gaara asked looking towards the trees near the clearing they were currently in. A tall man with long white hair walked out of the trees.

"Me? I am Jiraiya the toad sannin." He made a pose which made many of the children laugh. "Where exactly is Naruto?"

"He is sneaking into the daimyo's stronghold as part of a seven man team." Gaara said answering in his ever calm voice. The man nodded and looked at Lee.

"Are you Rock Lee?" Lee nodded at the man. "Good, I have news for you." Lee looked up at him.

"I brought the best medic ninja in the world with me. If she can't help you no one can." Lee gave a surprised look at Jiraiya. "Come on, she's waiting for you, she already knows what needs to be done."

Gaara watched as Lee followed the man, he wondered why Lee was so trusting with a stranger perhaps all leaf ninja were like him.

They stood in front of the gate of the stronghold an army of Naruto and the other six evenly spaced out in a circle around the tall tree surrounded wall. Shino was the first to do something letting his bugs leave his body in massive swarms and fly into the well protected place to take out the guards on the walls and to plant others on the daimyo. Chouji went next growing his hands to immense proportions and slamming them repeatedly into the gate smashing it down. The first group of Naruto ran into the building and were quickly destroyed. The real Naruto ran in after his friends as the clones began to jump over the walls and throw kunai with exploding tags at all of the buildings causing general mayhem.

Sasuke stopped in the center of the courtyard, which was rather dull except for the explosions, armored guards with swords and spears started spilling out of the stone building in the center of the complex. Sasuke did the hand symbols, Monkey, Dragon, Rat, Bird, Ox, Serpent, Dog, Tiger, and Monkey. The chidori came alive in his hand and he jumped out at his opponent imagining his brother's face instead of the man who his arm cut into, he did this numbly six more times before being knocked to his feet. The sword was coming down at him at an alarming rate of speed, his heart was racing but time was so slow, his sharingan activated on its own, why had he forgotten to use it? Something jumped over him, the real Naruto with a kunai in his hand which was smashed into the fighter's skull with a squelching sound.

Naruto stood stunned looking at the body of the first person he ever killed, it was so easy but then he had to do it or Sasuke would have died. He pulled out a new kunai and jumped into the fray with the others and Sasuke soon joined them. It took only a few minutes for the trained shinobi to wipe out the entire contingent of soldiers. Soon the daimyo himself came out with his sword drawn, he looked like he had not had any physical movement in years and he held the sword like a novice. The blade itself was a true warriors weapon custom made twenty years ago when the daimyo was a kind and brave leader, not the man who bent to Gato's will so easily who grew fat and happy while his people suffered.

"Who sent you? I can pay more than they ever can! I own this land and all of the people in it!" He yelled, when Naruto heard this he felt his anger begin to rise, he used that to get some of the foxes chakra. He then focused it into his kunai which he held up pointed at the man.

"I sent myself, I noticed a few things wrong with was you just said. First you assume that I will tell you who sent me. Second the money is nice but it doesn't matter, the cause is far more important than that. And you can't own people; people are free no matter what!" He yelled the last part tossing the chakra charged kunai, it cut open the man's gut and he began to scream in pain.

"It burns! Why does it burn?" The man screamed in pain, Naruto thought about this he had no poison on the kunai so it must have been the chakra.

"This is your judgment…It hurts because you are an evil person." Naruto said grinning insanely but leaning close to the man so that the others could not see him. He grabbed the kunai and shoved it into the man's spine.

"Hmm, this was easier then I thought." Sasuke said grabbing the sword from the man's cooling hand and weighting the weapon in his hand then placing it in his belt along with the scabbard. "I think we should get what we can from the buildings then leave." Naruto made clones and they began searching.

"A fifty percent chance of life and death. Life as your body once was or dead." Tsunade told Lee in no uncertain terms.

"Do it…My life is a worthless without being a ninja, my friends need me now." He said somberly. Jiraiya watched as Tsunade looked at the boy confused, she still didn't think about it the way she use to. Your allies are the most important thing to you; your own life is meaningless compared to theirs.

"Mr. Jiraiya sir…Naruto is back." Sakura said from the other side of the tent. Jiraiya excused himself and left. He had to look twice when he saw him, his face was splattered with dried blood and his arm was covered in it as well.

"So you killed for your first time eh?" Naruto didn't smile…he was so much like his father now, to kill and feel no remorse it was odd because only a week before the boy was like a male version of his mother and his father at his most joyful times. Jiraiya knew why, the Third must have put him in charge and he took that seriously and it was effecting his jovial personality which was really more of a mask then anything real, something else he had in common with his father the ability to go from happy to serious in an instant always keeping those nearest to him guessing which personality they would be dealing with.

"I had to, Sasuke was in trouble, they were not going to surrender, and the last one deserved it." He said in a voice that didn't seem quite right coming from a child, a mixture of indifference, righteousness, and sorrow. He had hated killing those people but now it was becoming second nature quickly.

"I understand. So kid you're the leader of this band of children huh?" Jiraiya said in a more cheerful voice trying to bring a smile to the blonde's face.

"Yes, Lord Hokage told be to lead them and keep them safe not matter what." He took up a more cheerful tone and added. "I make a good leader don't I?"

"Yes, you lead them to a country where ninja rarely travel and the economy is becoming stronger and therefore slowly beginning to be able to support a ninja community." Jiraiya praised him earning a large grin. "Now on to business, I brought a few of the Anbu from the village only about twenty lived and they were the ones that fought along side of me. They will be staying with you along with Tsunade; she is a medic ninja and the third sannin. I think it would be better if she took up more of a leadership position, with her experience and all. Also only one other group of people survived the attack, a few of the ninja from Konoha had lead many of the civilians from the village out during the attack. They are lead by Asuma Sarutobi and Kurenai Yuhi." Naruto took this in very well…but then he thought about the Tsunade part.

"I'm not letting some old lady take control! Why wasn't she in Konoha when we needed her?" He yelled angrily, Jiraiya noted that that anger had lost much of its usual comedic edge.

"She left the village after…"

"Left! She shouldn't be able to lead if she left!"

"She left because everyone important to her died. Her brother and lover both wanted to be Hokage, but they died fighting." Jiraiya cut Naruto off before he could get any ruder.

"Don't worry about me taking over your position kid. I would just be wasting my time leading a bunch of kids and a few Anbu. I'll stick around and take care of the wounded and even teach some of those who want to become medics, but I'm not leading a bunch of snot nosed brats." Naruto glared at the woman who looked rather young to be one of the sannin.

"I thought you would want to stick around. Now if you don't mind Naruto and I have some training to do." Jiraiya stated drawing both of their attentions to him.

"What Jutsu are you going to teach me pervy-sage?" Naruto asked excitedly.

"Rasengan, a technique invented by the Fourth Hokage, the Rasengan was meant to be an example of nature manipulation as the Fourth meant to combine his chakra element with the Rasengan. However, he died before he could accomplish this. Despite this, the Rasengan is still a very useful, if difficult to learn jutsu."

"This kid will never learn that jutsu!" Tsunade laughed.

"I will too! I'll learn it in one weak just you watch!" Naruto said angrily.

Jiraiya nodded his approval and looked at Tsunade. "You should bet him." He suggested slyly. She smiled.

"I bet you can't learn it in two! In fact I'll acknowledge your power and give you this," she held out a small pendent, which drew Jiraiya's and Naruto's attention, "it was my grandfather's he was the first Hokage."

"Deal!" Naruto looked at Jiraiya who started walking towards where they would be training.

"So how did seven ninja get into a stronghold so easily?" Jiraiya asked curiously.

"Shadow clones, I made more than a thousand." Naruto answered proudly.

"A thousand! That's going to help you train kid." Naruto gave him a questioning look.

"You see, the shadow clone technique distributes the ninja's chakra evenly among the clones and creates a real copy with form and substance. The clone itself can also utilize any jutsu the original ninja knows. When the clone finally disperses, any new knowledge it has gained is passed back to the original ninja and any additional clones. This makes shadow clones an excellent training method if the ninja has the chakra capacity and stamina to maintain the shadow clones for an extended period of time. This allows the ninja to essentially reduce the time it takes to train and learn with each clone added." Jiraiya explained slowly, if Naruto trained like that all the time for several years he would be on Jiraiya's level within three years. "From now on you will train with at least three clones watching you and three helping you if not more."

Naruto took all of this in before Jiraiya began explaining the first step.

Sasuke, Shikamaru, Chouji, Kiba, Shino, and Neji had decided to go to the bridge builder without Naruto who had gone off to train with Jiraiya. When they got to the house they were greeted by a cheerful Tazuna.

"You got rid of him?" He asked.

"Yes." Sasuke said in his condisending voice.

"Good, I'm going to town so the next step in my plan will begin." He began to walk off only to have Neji stop him.

"Our payment?" He said in his calm voice.

"Right, we found Zabuza's hideout a few months ago, that way where the forest becomes swamp its up in the trees. I'm sure you can build forts like his so you can all live up there." He said walking away.

"Ok we go tomorrow. Get everyone ready for the move."

"Actually Sasuke we can't leave yet. Tomorrow Lee is going to have an operation." Sakura said joining them. She explained who had joined them in their absence and what might be happening.

Failure. That was all it was, at least the first attempt, the second had made some progress but when only ten clones stood before Jiraiya Naruto had mastered the first step in two hours. He smiled and explained the second step and watched as an army of Naruto appeared before him.

It had been three day since their mission and already Tazuna had become leader of the country, apparently they had been planning this takeover since the day team seven had left. This had just hurried their plans.

The shinobi had asked at first thought of asking for help but one of the Anbu could create homes from nothing, they had a large hidden village by the forth day and where moving everything into the homes and storerooms by the fifth day. Lee was walking around on crutches under the watchful eyes of Tsunade when Naruto and Jiraiya approached her, laughing.

"I win!" Naruto said loudly drawing the attention of all of the nearby ninja, including Hinata, Neji and Sasuke.

"Impossible show me." She laughed at him

Naruto smiled held out a single hand and chakra began to spin in his palm and in a few second a fully formed Rasengan was in his hand. "I win." He said smugly. She blinked.

"How is it possible for him to have mastered that jutsu in such a short amount of time? Did you have something to do with this?" She looked angrily at Jiraiya who just laughed.

"No he is just a master of the Shadow clone technique, he created thousands of them each day and they learned it easily." He said smiling proudly. He was planning on teaching Naruto many more Jutsu this way very soon.

"So where is it?" Naruto asked. Tsunade smiled and pulled the pendent from her neck and hung it around Naruto's.

"You earned that, you really are stong."

A/N: Please review if you could. I hope you like the story so far, I am enjoying writing it so I hope you enjoy reading it. I'm retracting the first two questions from the last chapter, I have the pairings set already and I think I'm sure about what I'm going to do with the village. Either way you will know next chapter. I'm still looking for a beta however.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Birth of the Village Hidden in the Forest

Chapter 4: Birth of the Village Hidden in the Forest

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, lyrics (one Linkin Park song, Hit the Floor, is used in this chapter because it fits) but I do own the plot so if you want to use it ask and you may receive.

A/N: Just in case you were wondering the Anbu who created the buildings was Yamato, whose real name is Tenzou.

The rookie nine, team Gai, the sand siblings, Jiraiya, Tsunade, and several Anbu had gathered in the center of the forest city, Zabuza's original compound. They were discussing their next steps and options.

"Well first you have a hidden village which you can defend rather well even with the few ninja you have. Now you need to start doing two things, one train the younger ninja as well as you can while training yourself, and two you need to conserve as much money as you can while making as much as you can using the few ninja you can spare to do missions. The Anbu will split themselves in half, half doing missions and gaining customers and the other half protecting the village." Jiraiya began knowing the entire room was hanging on his every word. "I'm going to put half of my personal wealth into your supply so that you can have a little more help."

"Forgive me but shouldn't we decide who is going to lead us? This meeting won't get very far if we don't have someone to control it." Shino said. Jiraiya nodded.

"Any nominations?" Jiraiya asked the entire room. To no ones great surprise Naruto's hand jumped into the air. "Yes Naruto." He like the others expected a self nomination.

"I nominate you Jiraiya of the sannin." He said firmly. There was an odd silence after he said that, everyone had expected for him to say himself not anyone else but this had certainly changed a few opinions about Naruto.

"All those in favor say aye." The vote was unanimously in favor and Jiraiya nodded.

"Now we should talk about our head bands and our village name, and village leader's title." Jiraiya said. "We can no longer use the Konoha head bands as they will mark you as a lone ninja simply because every hidden village knows that Konoha has been destroyed by now. The name of the village could be just about anything you want really. The kage title is reserved only for the strongest villages which means if you choose to call them the Namikage it won't mean anything to the other shinobi villages. We should still use it just so that the other villages know our intent, becoming a world power again."

"And about making me leader…it won't happen, I decline." They all looked at him questioningly. "I still have my ability to vote and nominate someone so that person will become the Namikage. But, I'll be reserving that privilege until later. For now we have to get to work training the children."

Three day after the meeting Naruto was training alone, except for the thousand clones with him, he was given three jutsu a day and he usually mastered all of them quickly. He had not been aloud to teach a class yet because of his inability to understand the basics. That would be tomorrows lesson for him, he would be given several books on the subject and would have clones read them over several times. For the hours of studying he would learn quite a lot chief amoung these would be that he was to forceful with his chakra drawing it to quickly and not focusing on the hand symbols to guide his chakra. He began working on his problems the next day and everything soon became much more simple. He still had to work around his rather large chakra supply, he thought of a way around this too. He used hundreds of clones to focus chakra on just their finger tips, the result was many burnt fingers but also the ability to better focus chakra onto one point. After practicing so much Naruto was absolutely exasuted and spent an entire day sleeping.

When he woke he went right back to work. He had the clones focus chakra in both hands and make two Rasengan at the same time. It took the better part of a day but the clones began to get the idea and by nightfall he had two glowing, swirling balls of chakra in his hands.

Sakura and Ino had started learning from Tsunade the day after Lee's surgery, which they had watched, they learned as much as they could and hung on her every word. Under her watchful eyes they began to become fine medic ninja.

Shikamaru, Chouji, and ten of the chunin had become teachers training all of the academy students.

Jiraiya over saw all of the Anbu ten of whom where currently scouting out nearby islands. The other ten where watching over the village.

Sasuke had been training working with his new sword and the chidori he had found he could infuse the two making the blade nearly unbreakable and able to cut through almost anything.

"Do you still want to fight Sasuke?" Naruto asked one day, the rookie nine, team Gai and the sand siblings were the only ones to hear this but soon they were joined by others when Sasuke gave the obvious answer. They went to the large training platform which drew the attention of everyone in the village.

"Anything you want to say first?" Naruto asked.

"I'm going to wipe the floor with you." He said smugly.

"There are just too many times that people have tried to look inside of me wondering what I think of you and I protect you out of courtesy, too many times that I've held on to the image of you that everyone else keeps when I just needed to push it away, afraid to say what was on my mind afraid to say what I need to say, too many things that you said about me when I'm not around and even more when I am, you think having the upper hand means you gotta keep putting me down but I've had too many arguments with you it's about as much as I can stand." Naruto growled so only Sasuke could hear him clearly, the other caught enough of the harshly spoken words to know this was going to be a serious fight.

"There is no one to stop this fight, what if I kill you with chidori?" Sasuke taunted.

"How odd if the people of Konoha had seen this fight they would have thought 'the prince is about to kill the monster'" He gave a harsh laugh and continued. "So many put their trust in you, but why? Just because you are an Uchiha? It's about time someone put an end to all these lies! So many people just like me put so much trust in all those lies. They were so concerned with what you think to just say what they feel inside, so many people like me walk on eggshells all day long so they don't upset you. All I know is that all I want is to feel like I'm not stepped on. There are so many things you say that make me feel you crossed the line and its about time we settle our differences." He gave into his built up hate and used it to say everything he had ever thought negatively about the Uchiha.

"You just keep talking but you aren't saying anything! Prove that I'm not what they think I am!" Sasuke yelled getting angry too.

"Fine! Let's start then." He threw two kunai both were easily blocked, but it gave him time to make twenty clones who attacked Sasuke but were quickly defeated by the sword which was now covered with electricity. 'That's new.' Naruto observed remembering the sword from the dead daimyo.

"I can freeze your entire body with this sword Naruto, then everyone will know just how weak you are. Every match you have won until now was just luck." He yelled. Neji shook his head he didn't have watch the fight to know how it was going to end, he already knew what would happen. Hinata disliked what Sasuke had said, she knew that Naruto worked hard for everything he learned and that his victories were real not just luck.

Sasuke charged in attempting to stab his teammate but he missed every time even with the sharingan Naruto was too fast to follow. He had to win! If he couldn't beat Naruto then how was he supposed to kill his brother?

"I must win!" He could see…three tomoe were now on both eyes…everyone who was watching thought that Naruto had no chance against this new enhancement. They were right only a few second after the third tomoe appear Naruto was cut in the shoulder by the blade freezing him.

"I have to win, I must become stronger than my brother, I have to avenge my family!" Sasuke yelled at the blonde. "You know nothing about living in someone else's shadow, then to have that person destroy everything! You're an orphan you have no idea what it's like to lose your family. You will never understand what I've gone through you have no idea what pain is."

"Out of all of them…I thought that you would understand me, I was an orphan and I heard that you were too…but instead of everyone hating you they loved you no matter what! I may never have had a family but I do know what it is like to lose won. I had a mother and a father…they both died the night I was born, my mother giving birth to me and my father sealing the nine tailed fox into me." This brought a surprised jolt from the crowd and too Sasuke who moved his arm and the sword out of Naruto's shoulder.

"What do you mean?" Sasuke asked stunned. Naruto laughed and un zipped his jacket and tossed it to the ground his shirt followed reveling to everyone the seal which held the demon fox. Neji's eyes widened in surprise as he remembered his fight with Naruto when they had talked about seals, compared to his own Naruto's seal was huge.

"He gave his own life to save the village, he only asked that I be remembered as a hero for keeping the fox imprisoned. Instead I lived in poverty having to deal with the hate filled looks of every person in the village. When I got into the academy everyone treated me like I was diseased, no one talked to me for years. But you were an orphan too, you were perfect compared to me, you were naturally skilled where I could barely do simple jutsu. They loved you wanted to be your friend but you didn't want them…I wanted a friend my entire life but you just pushed people away. I was lonely all I wanted was someone to be friends with but you pushed everyone away. I tried to train like you but I couldn't, I was never good enough but I never stopped trying even now I continue to train to gain your recognition. You say I have no idea what pain is but I think you have a different idea of pain, you think it is just loss, but it's so much more, isolation, hate, indifference, ignorance, distrust and baseless accusations these are parts of pain."

Naruto moved his arm out and began gathering chakra and a Rasengan was in the center of it soon after. Sasuke put his sword away and ignited a chidori in his hand.

"One attack, all of our energy at once?" Sasuke asked and Naruto laughed. They jumped towards each other their arms held out with the attacks leading the way. They met in the center of the gathered crowd and a great flash of energy was created as Sasuke and Naruto met as equals their jutsu slamming together with such force it shook the training platform and all the people on it. Naruto fell first and was impaled by the little energy left in Sasuke's arm, it was enough for him to go all of the way through.

Naruto smiled and moved forward Sasuke's arm still in his chest. "I win." He whispered grabbing the stunned boy's shoulders. No one had noticed the shadow clone jutsu, perfectly timed and executed. The kunai touched Sasuke's neck as the clone disappeared. The crowd looked at the real Naruto standing behind Sasuke with a kunai to the other boy's neck. Neji smiled, he had known the real Naruto had been standing in the branches above the platform waiting for the opportune moment to strike. Jiraiya collected his money from Tsunade laughing the entire time. Hinata smiled, she too had seen Naruto watching from above after activating her Byakugan.

Sasuke smiled knowing that Naruto had surpassed him. 'Damn I thought I could have beaten him.' He thought about why he had lost, he hadn't thought to see if the clone had been real, he should have known.

"Don't doubt anything I said today." Naruto said walking away.

A week later Naruto had a question for Jiraiya. "When can I learn fire jutsu or some other elemental jutsu?" Jiraiya looked at Naruto for a few seconds before bringing out a small piece of paper.

"This paper will tell you what kind of element you can use most naturally. It will burn if you have fire, crumple if you have lightning, turn to dust if you have earth, become wet if you have water and split in two if you have wind." He gave Naruto the paper and he told him to focus chakra into it. It split perfectly in half in his hands.

"First you need to know that there are two types of chakra manipulation, spatial and elemental. You have already mastered spatial by learning the Rasengan which is a jutsu that uses the highest form of spatial manipulation. You will be learning elemental manipulation tomorrow."

"Why tomorrow?" Naruto asked.

"Because, Asuma and the ninja who survived the attack will be returning today." Jiraiya motioned him to follow which he did grudgingly. "Don't worry kid I'll have someone who can help you with your training." Tenzou could control the nine tailed fox whose chakra would definitely be coming to the surface in large quantities.

The twenty ninja now walking into the city, Asuma was met by Ino, Shikamaru and Chouji. Kurenai was nearly tackled by Kiba, who had tripped Hinata and Shino towards their sensei. Naruto looked at the other ninja, he only knew one personally but that was enough to put a great amount of joy in his heart, Iruka had somehow survived the battle.

"You're alive Iruka sensei!" He shouted gleefully running up the ninja.

"Naruto, you made it." He replied happily.

"Of course people try to kill him but it just doesn't work." Sasuke said coming from behind Naruto.

"I've been wondering how you two did in the exams, it didn't come up much while we where traveling." Iruka inquired.

"I lost…" Sasuke said with more than just a hint of annoyance in his voice.

"I won my first match, but my second one with Gaara ended in a tie." Naruto said proudly.

"That's great…So who is in charge here?" Iruka asked, they hadn't been told anything actually just the coordinates of the village to drop off the surviving civilians where they learned of the location of the new hidden village.

Sasuke answered with a stoic voice, "Whoever the sannin Jiraiya decides is in charge." Iruka looked at him asking for more information. "He didn't want the position even though everyone voted for him, except for himself so he is the only one with any say in the matter." Iruka's face went blank then he slowly began to chuckle heartily.

"What's so funny?" Naruto asked.

"The most famous porn writer in the world has the power to name the first leader of a shinobi village." He chuckled. Sasuke smirked while Naruto remembered his trainers less impressive traits.

Three days after the arrival Naruto asked Asuma a question as he and Shikamaru played shogai. "How does wind chakra work?" After listening to the explanation and seeing the effects of the wind chakra empowered blade he disappeared in a puff of smoke stunning both of the ninja he had been talking to.

Jiraiya was surprised that Naruto was mastering elemental manipulation so quickly, he pushed himself to the limits and by the end of the week he and Naruto, the original he had check to make sure there where no clone at the time, stood facing each other on the training platform.

"Naruto all you have to remember is to not use Rasengan. Everything else goes." With that Jiraiya made a shadow clone who stood in front of Naruto, he didn't want to be killed with blades of wind on accident. "And another thing I didn't tell you while you were training. This battle decides the future of the village, whichever one of us wins this battle will become the leader of the village." Jiraiya added with smile, they had drawn a crowd and it was growing now.

"I'm going to win, it doesn't matter what you do!" Naruto said seriously, he pulled a scroll from his sleeve and an instant later he held a windmill shuriken which he pumped wind chakra into extending the blades out until they nearly touched the floor. He threw it, the clone was able to dodge easily but what he wasn't expecting was for Naruto to pull a nearly invisible wire which turned the shuriken back toward the clone, this time it cut into its shoulder spilling blood onto the wood. Naruto caught it as it returned to him and stabbed it into the ground.

Neji nearly laughed out loud as he had again figured out who would win this fight, at least that was what he thought. Much of the village was watching now, even Shikamaru watched complaining that he had to keep up with all of Naruto's random movements but he watched. Sasuke watched as he relived past fights he watched Naruto fought, he too could guess the outcome though he was wrong, he had activated his sharingan to watch the fight more closely. Hinata hoped that Naruto would win, but she could see that Jiraiya's clone had taken the defensive both of the fighter's had something up their sleeves. Shino watched as his own beliefs in trump cards played out he too soon began to put together the many ways the fight could end.

It was Tsunade who was the most correct in her assumption, when Shinsune jokingly asked if she wanted to place a bet she answered 'I'll take fifty-fifty.'

Naruto had created six clones who surrounded the Jiraiya clone and simply opened their arms wide then yelled, "Forest of wind, charka branches." Blades of wind chakra shot from the clones destroying them and the Jiraiya clone. Naruto looked behind him where the clones' clone stood preparing a Rasengan.

"You caught him making that did you?" The real Jiraiya asked chuckling appreciatively. Naruto stood and summoned more clones they made a Rasengan in each of his hands and he lunged towards the Jiraiya clone who met the attack. The original Jiraiya hadn't excepted what happened next, the shuriken turned into Naruto, the original who jumped towards their clones, for all of their predictions no one could have guessed what happened next, Naruto jumped in the last few feet, then spun and yelled, "Heavenly wind spin!" It was an exact copy of the Hyuuga clan 'Heavenly spin' except the wind chakra used instead of normal chakra, it resulted in a horrifying scene of clones being ripped to shreds before poofing away.

"Looks like you win…which means I have to choose who the leader is going to be just like I agreed." Pausing for dramatic effect Jiraiya continued. "I think that it should be…you Naruto, unfortunately I also think that you aren't mature enough just yet, so until then I will lead in your steed, you will be the Namikage in title." Jiraiya said to him, the Naruto of the past would have jumped in the air yelling kage I'm kage, but instead he just smiled, he thought about everything he had gone through to get here. The loss of Konoha, the Third, and friends. He had gained respect, strength and more friends. He had spent weeks training until he passed out learning for more than an thousand everyday but he knew, as he always had, that he had to work for many more years to become kage level. Even at his current rate of growth.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5 Changes

Chapter 5 Changes

Disclaimer: I don't own much…but I own this plot, not the characters, not even time skips…I'm bored now…

A/N: Hello, I would like to say thank you to everyone who has favorited, alerted, or added this story to a C2…Thanks!!

GarP.OmE.HoLloW: A special thanks to you for being my first reviewer. I'm going to be doing a time skip soon, within the next few chapters, when that is done Naruto will be a bit older than he is in canon.

Neji had known his entire life that he had no chance of ever leading the Hyuuga clan and since the destruction of Konoha and the old way of clan structure this idea had been replaced. There was a new Hyuuga clan, he was the oldest living member the next being Hinata. Only he, Hinata, Hinabi, and twenty other Hyuuga children survived the destruction of the village. Perhaps this was fortunate because Naruto, Namikage Namikaze as he was calling himself, said that their would be no use of the caged bird seal on any member of either branch of the clan, after he made Neji the leader of the clan. He had said that it was not strength that was the deciding but who would benefit from temporary leadership, he then said that once Hinata had 'grown into her own person' she would take her rightful place at the head of the clan. Neji was, in a way, glad that he wouldn't have to lead the clan for his entire life; it wasn't that he didn't want the position; it was that he found that the position was different then he had thought it was. He thought that the clan protected the leader but Naruto had told him that it was the exact opposite, the leader protected the clan with their life, in theory at least, he knew he had changed in becoming the leader, he now held more than his life in his hands, he held the name of the clan, the responsibility, and the lives of the others in the clan. Hinata was a much more caring person than him, she had proven this in their preliminary match, she would care more for the people in the clan then any leader before her, this was Naruto's plan of course. How the blonde kage had grown so insightful was beyond him, perhaps it was being given control of the band of children and the sense of responsibility that had so rapidly matured him.

Kiba had never viewed himself being the leader of his clan, or at least so soon, he was worse off than Neji and Shino who both had taken over the leadership of their clans as his clan members were just like him, loud, rude and disrespectful. Perhaps it was retribution for a life of sleeping during class and lectures from his mother, or maybe just genetics. He was lucky though of all of Konoha's 'normal' shinobi clans, the Inuzuka are the closest to becoming a Bloodline. Every generation, their teeth become a bit sharper and their senses just a little more acute. Their ability to communicate with their dogs becomes better and their Ninjutsu more natural. When they do become a proper Bloodline though, they will differ from their contemporaries for one simple reason: They are more than a simple clan. They are a _family_. They do not marry their kinsmen, they do not hate outsiders, and they do not breed insane prodigies and traitors. They are _family_; brothers, sisters, cousins. They support each other, they are loyal to each other and they are outwardly more emotional than either the frigid Uchiha or the arrogant Hyuuga, both of whom were in the midst of being eaten alive by internal conflict. So when he is annoyed by one of his cousins they both voice their opinions as loudly as they can then wrestle playfully until the conflict is completely forgotten. He is a leader who would do anything for those he leads simply because he had been raised to love his family and do anything for them.

Naruto was not training today; instead he was watching someone else train today, in secret just as she had watched him for who knows how long. Tenzou had told him that the future leader of the Hyuuga had been watching him train since the first day they met; Jiraiya had also caught the girl spying on Naruto's training sessions. Today he was going to ask her why she was watching him, when he had announced this to his trainers they had simply called him foolish. He watched her as she pushed herself as hard as she could to beat the log she was battering with her soft fist style into a pile of splinters. She chose to train at the roots of the trees in the swampy mud and fallen branches and trees, away from the other ninja of the village hidden in the forest.

"Forest ninja should know not to travel alone, especially when they still have their leaf headbands." He said walking towards her. He had asked for everyone to stop wearing the headbands until they could make new ones.

"N-n-Naruto!" She stuttered in surprise. 'Why did he follow me?'

"Don't you mean Namikage?" He joked; he had been called Namikage a total of two times after taking the title, both by himself.

"Y-yes, I'm sorry Namikage." She squeaked.

"I was just joking Hinata, just call me Naruto." He laughed.

"S-sorry…"

"You don't have to apologize, you didn't do anything wrong." He said almost forgetting why he had been watching. "So, how long have you been watching me?" He asked casually, she blushed and redder then he could imagine a person could then fainted. Luckily he caught her and set her down gently on a bed of moss on one of the taller roots. The cool air coming up from the water and the heat of the air created a perfect mix and he soon fell asleep.

When he woke he found that Hinata had left and that it was night time. She had left a note on his lap which he would read as soon as he got home. As he ran up the tree towards his new home a gentle breeze knocked the letter from his pocket and it fell to the murky water without him noticing.

When he got home he immediately noticed that the letter was gone. Unsure what to do he went to find the person who wrote it. He lived close to the tree the Hyuuga had taken over so he was soon at the door he knew to be hers. He knocked until she answered. She stood in the doorway blushing in a sudden movement she kissed him fully on the lips surprising him completely. He jumped back nearly a foot.

"Hinata what was that for?" He gasped unsure what to say.

"Y-you didn't read my letter?" She sounded mortified.

"I lost it…" He explained lamely. She blushed again and slammed the door in his face. He felt very foolish about the entire thing.

Three days after trying and failing to talk to Hinata Naruto decided to visit Haku and Zabuza's graves with Sasuke and Sakura. When arrived they didn't talk for awhile, in a way they were burying Kakashi and all of the others who had died in Konoha.

"I miss my parents…"Sakura said, she had tried not to talk about her family with anyone but Ino but it made her feel better.

"Kakashi should be here visiting them with us." Sasuke said looking to the sky. "Perhaps heaven is real and that is were they all are."

"Our hope comes from the past generations, those who came before us give us the strength to continue on, and that is the will of fire." Naruto said the first teaching of the religion of the leaf ninja was one that he took to heart. "They will always be with us, if not physically then their passion in our hearts, their power in our chakra, their knowledge in our jutsu." Sasuke had not heard those words in a long time, not since the death of his family.

"How do you know it by heart Naruto?" He asked still looking at the sky now trying to blink tears from his eyes.

"Every day I prayed to those who had lived in the village before me to give me and friend, some recognition, anything." He answered sadly; he didn't try to cover his tears.

"Don't worry those prayers have been answered. We have friends now, and because of each other we are truly strong."

Naruto grabbed Zabuza's sword then pulled it from the ground. It was heavy but he soon got use to the weight, he held in with two hands and slowly pushed his chakra into it, the wind blade extended nearly double the length of the original sword. Sasuke looked on with his sharingan, the blade was extremely sharp and he knew whoever would be on the receiving end of that blade would surly die.

The next day Sasuke began reading the Third's scrolls, many of them had kinjutsu which he passed up but he came to one scroll marked 'History of the Senju clan.' It was the first in a series the next being 'Creation of Konoha', 'The Uchiha Clan History', 'Smaller of the Smaller Clans', 'First Fifty Years of Konoha'. He began reading them, first the Uchiha Clan history.

_The Uchiha beginnings are unknown except to members of the clan. Their powers and abilities are well documented as are their transactions with countries before the founding of Konoha. The Sharingan is one of the three great doujutsu, and hold the most sinister chakra of the three. The Hyuuga Byakugan is known to have the purest and the Rin'negan __its power is said to be enough to save or destroy the world thus being neutral it use being decided by the user._

_The Sharingan is a bloodline limit, or Kekkei Genkai __it allows the user to comprehend the attack of an opponent almost before the attacker knows what attack they are making. The Sharingan also allows the user to see the flow of __chakra__ within a person, but to a lesser extent than the Byakugan. When the Sharingan is first activated by the user, it has one to two tomoe around a central pupil. The wielder of the Sharingan, through continued use, evolves the Sharingan which involves gaining tomoe. The maximum number of tomoe in a conventional Sharingan is three. When the user gets three tomoe, he becomes able to predict all movement from his opponent. The Sharingan is a special type of pupil condition that naturally occurs in all members of the Uchiha clan, though not all of them gain the ability to use it. Even though not confirmed, it has been revealed that the purpose of the Sharingan could be, to be able to control the Nine Tailed Fox. The Sharingan's first and most well known ability is to memorize any technique that it witnesses. It can memorize ninjutsu, genjutsu, and taijutsu with perfect accuracy, allowing the user to use the techniques as his own. In order to reproduce copied jutsu, however, one must have the necessary skill or ability to perform them. In addition to physical skill, the Sharingan cannot allow the user to reproduce other kekkei genkai since the Sharingan user doesn't possess the same genetic trait. Additionally, Sharingan users cannot summon a creature which they have not made a contract with. The Sharingan also grants the user incredible clarity of perception, allowing them to track fast-moving objects with ease and even predict the subsequent movements of those objects. The ability to track and predict movement is largely based on individual skill, as unskilled users have much more trouble tracking fast-moving objects. A fully-evolved Sharingan eye can track all but the quickest opponents, even if the user can't move at the same speed, (so even if the user can follow his or her opponent's movements it doesn't necessarily mean their body will be able to react fast enough even though they saw the attack coming). This perception is also great enough to see through genjutsu, depending upon the skill of the user, and the ability to observe the movement and flow of chakra, but not to the same extent or clarity as the Byakugan. Another ability of the Sharingan is the ability to see chakra as color, even through other objects. Additionally, the Sharingan grants the user exceptional analytical powers, allowing them to instinctively pick up on various visual clues with little difficulty. The Sharingan also is capable of a unique brand of hypnosis that involves suggesting actions and thoughts to the opponent. When used in conjunction with the other aspects of the Sharingan, this allows the user to perfectly mimic every move their opponent makes, even before they do, making it appear as if the user can see the future. The Sharingan does not automatically appear from birth in a user; instead, it will usually appear when the user is in a life-threatening situation, where the power of the Sharingan could save the user. After this first appearance, the user can then call up the Sharingan any time he or she pleases. _

_The Uchiha specialize in fire __jutsu__ like __Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique__. Clan members are properly recognized as adults by the rest of the clan when they become proficient with this jutsu. They are also known to have excellent natural physical conditions; they can perform hand seals and taijutsu faster than other clans and ninja._

_The most famous of the Unchiha's enemies were the Senju clan with whom they eventually formed the village hidden in the leaves._

Sasuke read for hours and absorbed the knowledge that came from his clan's battles, many battles they were. He soon found that they continued to fight one clan often, Senju of the forest who they would eventually co-create Konoha with. At the very end of the book there was a hand written note:

_Itachi Uchiha to end the clan, I tried to stop this but my ex-teammates voted with Danzo to have the boy destroy his own clan due to the possibility of them forcing the nine tails to attack the village. To anyone who may read this know that Itachi is not a criminal, he actually had his brother stay after school to study more before returning home so that he would not have to be killed._

_They are the only known survivors. But I am uncertain of this, Minato told me before his death that the Kyuubi was being controlled, which can only be done using Mangekyo Sharingan. I have gone over the possibilities and have come to several conclusions but one that keeps coming up for some reason, it is the least likely, is that Madara Uchiha is still alive…Third Hokage_

He reread the note more than ten times…could it be that his brother was just a ninja, a tool that would kill its own family? Could his clan have forced the nine tailed fox attack the village? Did he really want the answers?

He read the book on the Senju clan the next day trying to put off thinking about his family. He found that the Uchiha were the exact opposite of the Senju. Were the Uchiha killed mercilessly the Senju did so sparingly, they also protected their comrades before themselves. He read of the great battles between Madara and the First Hokage, the leader of the Senju.

Sasuke had a lot to think about, his clan, his family, his brother, and most importantly himself.

Hinata had avoided Naruto as well as she could but he had found her again as she trained in the murky water below the village. She had not wanted to talk to him about the letter, she had confessed her love for him and how he gave her strength, because he had lost it. She knew it was an accident but she was, for the first time, angry at him.

"Hinata, can we talk?" He asked. She remained silent so he continued. "I didn't mean to lose the letter and you startled me when you kissed me the other night." He fidgeted a little when she remained silent. "Please talk to me Hinata." He urged. Those were words she had wanted to her since she first saw him, after years of rehearsing she answered in a way even she didn't expect.

"Fight me Naruto." She said firmly, no words she had said before came so easily or naturally, it just felt right. He gave a confused look but nodded, taking the sword from off of his back and putting a paper seal on it.

"So you won't get cut." He said. He pointed the large sword at her, they were twelve feet from each other and the sword took up most of that space. She activated her byakugan and went into a fighting stance then jumped at the boy she liked? Adored? Loved?

He pushed her away with a nudge from his sword, she took the blow and ducked under the blade going in low underneath the blade, she jabbed at the boy's body closing as many chakra points as she could. She heard the whirling and saw the blade swinging at her with her byakugan. She dodged but found that Naruto was no longer holding the handle. Instead he had made two clones who were now rushing towards her kunai in hand. The original was jumping from above a rasengan in hand; she had only one choice, the heavenly spin. Before this she had never been able to do it so well, but this time it was for him, at him technically but she didn't care, the two attacks met and they were both spun away from each other in the opposite direction, she slammed into a tree hard she even felt a bone or two break. Naruto grabbed his sword handle to stop himself; he pulled it from the tree and leapt towards her putting the blade near her neck.

"Let's get you to the hospital." He said smiling at her. She smiled up at him as he put his sword away. At that moment she jumped up striking him on the head with her hand.

"Don't put down your guard until your opponent can't fight." She said remembering one of the things Iruka had told them in class. Naruto smiled remembering back to those days, he had few memories of her though she had always been on the sidelines watching, but only when he was there, he started to understand how long she had been watching him.

"Hinata what do you really think about me?" He asked throwing caution to the wind, Sakura never responded well to this question.

"I-I-I l-love you." She said almost too quickly for him to understand, almost. She closed her eyes not wanting to see him laugh at her, ridicule her. Instead she felt him embrace her, his lips gently touch hers, if it weren't for the smell of murky water she would have thought she was in heaven. Then a shock of pain jolted her and she opened her eyes. "Can we go to the hospital now?" She asked in a pained voice. He took her in his arms and carried her bridal style into the village.

Naruto was unsure of his own feelings but he was happy to have a girl who thought that he was dateable. He had never disliked Hinata, she had always been behind him, probably rooting him on silently he just never took the time to notice the girl. He felt he owed it to her to at the very least try to be with her. The strength she had just showed made him think of how much she had grown since the exams. He was proud. When he looked at her eyes he saw something he had never seen before love, love for him!

He smiled uncontrollably, he hadn't been smiling as much as he used to, not since he had watched the old man die, not since he had started to train, every time he created a thousand clones they thought, about everything at first and it had made him grow up. Lee had told him to not compare himself to anyone else, 'only you are a measuring pole for yourself'. He had listened to that, and during the hundreds of D-rank missions he and his clones did every day since becoming kage, he had thought about his position in the world. He was a leader now; he needed to be strong, courageous, willing to take responsibility for his actions and decisions, belief, an understanding of the people he lead, and vision. (A/N these are from One Small Step by Shawny Wong which is a great story)

A/N: I would find it hilarious if someone who just watches the anime and is an Uchiha fan reads this and goes 'don't make a clan that rivals the Uchiha they are the best!!111oneone!!' or even 'dude don't make up fake clans that won't exist in the show.'(the manga is written by Masashi Kishimoto the creator of Naruto and is therefore canon, not the anime) Just incase this does happen I didn't make up the Senju clan, they were the rivals of the Uchiha, I'm just making up the history of the clan and some of the beliefs based off of Konoha ninja beliefs, guessing that the Senju were the ones that started the ninja of Konoha. I'm also guessing that Minato and Naruto aren't related to this clan but the Third is (not sure if this will show up in my story I'm just ranting.) seeing as he was trained from when he was young and the first and second look relatively young. Well I think that the manga is going in the wrong direction, or maybe the title is just wrong, it focuses so much more on Sasuke then Naruto. Sasuke has a strong back-story while all we know about Naruto is that his dad is Minato and he grew up alone (how was he raised and taught to talk? I'm thinking a Frankenstein's creature's esque childhood.) but we know almost all of Sasuke's childhood. I don't hate Sasuke, which should be apparent from my writing as I use him all the time, but I think Naruto has the better morals. Sasuke is this 'cool' guy who wants to kill his brother!! How is that a good theme? Naruto is the come from behind forgotten son of a hero who has never been respected yet shows amazing growth, if Kishi just let him drop that jokester/hyperactive mask he would be a much better person. I know that people love the Uchiha for being like uber god like but the truth is they are a family built on lies and violence. This is why I portray the Senju clan as the clan that created the morale and religious beliefs of the village not the Uchiha. I may or may not change this story to reflect whatever revelations the great unkillable Madara lies about, I would trust the nine tailed fox before I trusted him, in the next chapter, it depends on what he says I guess…

Now I'm quickly approaching the time skip…which means I need to make Naruto's genin team! I have three made already and want to see if you like them.

Gereso:This heroic ninja is short and has a broad-shouldered build. He has tattoos on his arms. His hooded eyes are midnight black (A doujutsu with allows him to see in any amount of light). He has sky-blue hair worn in a style that resembles a flame. The tattoos are what release his jutsu instead of hand seals. He can create black mist to conceal his movements. His preferred weapon is a sling (which seems to be almost alive). He is skilled in pickpocketing.

Tadei: This awkward kunoichi has a lean build. She has thin eyebrows. Her narrow eyes are gray. She has curly violet hair. She uses two katanas and aims to be one of the swordsmen of Morigakure.

Merawako: This friendly ninja is very tall and has a narrow build. He has scarlet hair worn in a style that resembles a flowing river. He wears a red trench coat and uses red playing cards, with sharp edges, as weapons. He can imbune these cards with lightning chakra making them very dangerous.

I'm still making more to see which ones I like and I just want your opinions.

I just now noticed how fing long this is and will now stop…


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Chapter 6 Ninja of Morigakure, the Village Hidden in the Forest

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or the Characters. I own the plot so ask if you want to use it.

A/N: this story has become my most popular in just two weeks so that is good…I'm going to be focusing on this story and much less on the others.

Biddybam: Umm…thanks? A lot really thanks, yes well…what site? (You don't have to say your praise and worship is enough P) The best AU fic? I'm not sure if this is the best AU, I like Team 8 by S'Tar'Kan more than this, I know there are a lot of AU fics with worse grammar than mine (and those that avoid the spell check button like the plague) but I don't think mine is the best. I do put myself down about all of my fics and tend to agreed with people who say 'this is an average fic'. My original stuff is much better because I can make the rules of the world instead of working in someone else's sandbox.

Sasuke Uchiha had never thought about life after killing his brother, in fact he had never thought about how he was going to kill his brother, or even find him. He knew that he could never do this on his own, even with help he may never be able to, now he was faced with the possibility that he was the good older brother he had always been, but he was also a ninja forced to destroy a threat to his village. His parents and clan were that threat. But he wasn't, Itachi had saved him, but why? Was he so different from the rest of his clan he didn't deserve to die like them? Perhaps it was because he truly believed in the will of fire and his parents did not.

If the old clan was rotting from the inside then he would make a new clan, one that would last, one that believed what the rest of the village believed. He would create a clan that was built on trust not the power gained from killing your best friend.

When he walked outside of his room he saw Naruto who walked up to him and asked. "What have you been up to?"

"A lot of thinking, I've come to a few decisions. I'm going to protect the village Naruto…Namikage Naruto." He said. "I also need to build a clan." He added. Naruto laughed at this.

"You do know that entails talking to girls right? Even more than one wife if you're lucky." He joked.

"Yes I know that." Sasuke said sounding annoyed.

"What about Sakura or Ino? They both really like you." Naruto said beginning to walk, Sasuke followed wanting to finish a conversation for the first time in as long time.

"They like the romanticized idea of me, my name, my clan, and my prince like appearance to them." He said it was true Naruto had said this himself when they had fought.

"Who do you like?" Naruto asked.

"I've never thought about it actually…" The dark haired boy said not really finishing. He had only ever thought about Itachi, his revenge on Itachi, never about the other part of his ambition. The past no longer mattered, Naruto trusted him and that was enough to gain the trust of the village.

Lee had been training hard since recovering from his surgery. He could now open the celestial gates without practically dieing from pain. He knew he could never do the reverse lotus again, not any time soon anyway. Instead he set about making his own move, one that would do more then the lotus moves ever could.

He had seen Naruto's growth several times over that past month, the once loud-mouth ninja was now serious, composed, and becoming a strong leader. The village leader did twenty some missions a day never resting. Thousands of clones spilled from the village each day following the other ninja who did missions. Naruto himself stayed in the village walking with Sasuke or one of the others of the rookie nine. Lee decided he would continue to train to protect the new fledgling village.

Gaara was working on his chakra, each day he drew less and less on the demon's chakra; his own power was growing exponentially. He stood proudly as his sand spread out in a wider area; he was training not to protect just himself but others as well. He was getting better at making large shields that could take explosions and even stronger lightning attacks. The one tail could use wind attacks which meant he too should have the ability, which meant his weakness to lightning attacks would soon end.

The next week he would begin to harness his second element.

Naruto and Sasuke stood on one of the many catwalks over looking the open-roofed academy. Neither could believe that just months before they had been students of the ninja arts learning from Iruka, who taught the class they were watching.

"Weird, I never would have thought we would be friends Sasuke."

"…Neither did I."

"Back then we were alone, but not anymore. If anything happens to me Sasuke I want you to protect them. I want you to know that I trust you more than the others." They were quite for a long time, they didn't say goodbye they had no need to, they just walked away leaving the other to his thoughts.

Naruto watched as Lee trained one day. Lee just trained non stop noticing the blonde only after a half hour of the blonde watching him.

"How can I help you Lord Namikage?" He asked when he noticed him.

"Just keep up the hard work Lee." Naruto said giving the best 'good guy' smile and thumbs up he could muster.

Lee did just that, Naruto was impressed. Even without chakra Lee had amazing speed, something he needed to improve with his new sword.

"I was wondering if you could help me get better at using this thing." Naruto said pointing over his should at the sword that was taller then he was.

Lee looked at the large sword and understood the problem immediately. Naruto lost his balance when he used the sword. "Of course I can."

They spent the next two weeks training Naruto until he could handle his sword with one hand alone and the weight of the sword was nothing to him. At the beginning of their training Naruto had to rely on chakra to meet Lee as an equal in battle. By the end he still had to draw out chakra but not nearly as much as before, and that was without using wind chakra.

Lee had learned a lot about Naruto's style and lack of style. He had no set battle plan even with his new weapon. Every time they fought was different. This had improved Lee's own style because he had found something he too could naturally fall into completely random movements. The day after the end of Naruto's training Lee challenged Neji to one more fight.

"You're going to lose just like all of the other times." Neji said, though he was not so confident Lee would not have challenged him if he didn't have something up his sleeve.

"Let us begin, just know that this time will be different from the rest." Neji moved gracefully into a defensive position, Lee jumped the twenty feet between them in a single bound. 'He doesn't have his weights on.' He moved faster than Neji remembered, he blocked the first few hits but something wasn't the same. Lee's attacks came from random directions and he left himself completely open to attack.

Neji went on the offensive when a perfect attack showed itself, his arm bent in an odd direction faster then even his byakugan eyes could see, then Lee slowed his kick down, just to show Neji what was happening, the foot slammed into his other arm as he was punched in the face. A moment later he was blinded by pain when he felt his other arm get dislocated by an open handed punch.

Lee didn't stop there, he punched from every angle dipping low jumping high like he was drunk. Neji held up his one good arm to stop Lee. "I surrender, you win." This new style was so different, to fast for Neji to follow correctly.

"I am a natural master of the drunken fist style, you can not block what has no sure movement, my body reacts to everything and nothing can stop me. My movements are to random for your eyes to follow, perhaps even the Sharingan would have a hard time following my movements." Lee said proudly.

"Good job Lee, you're a strong ninja Gai sensei would be proud of you." Neji said smiling, Lee had tears in his eyes. The people who were watching were stunned.

Kiba had to train eight of his cousins the clan's taijutsu before they went to the academy the next year, after that they were left to advance at their own pace. He had come to realize that he was a prodigy, he was in tune Akamaru and his ability to smell were far beyond the others. 'Maybe that's because no one taught them to get along all the time, or how to differentiate between smells.'

Once he had figured out the problem it was simple to fix, he spent the first month in the new village teaching them the basics of the clan. He still noticed that they were not at the same level as he was when he joined the academy but they would work on that too.

He continued working on his own attacks demonstrating how to work with the canine companions that were all important to the clan. He had made several new attacks that would definitely help in the future.

Shino also had to train young clan members, this was considerably easier in his case because his clan had perfect schedules that they followed to keep the growing children in line. He did have one question though. What about the ones who move faster than the others? He remembered his father had trained him in private not with the other children of the clan, they had moved at his pace no one else's. He applied the same idea here individualizing the children. For the first time in the clan's history they had competition within. Shino noted that it was not entirely bad or good. The children challenged each other making them move faster and master the steps to controlling the bugs far easier. They also showed more emotion, this was barely noticeable to people who were actually emotional on the outside but to a Hyuuga the difference would be obvious.

Shino had added another colony of bugs to his body, he felt it a necessary part of his growth to add more of the bugs to his body. The two colonies did work well together fortunately, if they had not he would have to kill one of them, and he began expanding on his attacks.

Shikamaru was lucky, Iruka had gotten him out of being a teacher at the academy, Chouji too was lucky and had gotten out. Now he had nothing to do, he noticed that everyone from his year was training hard and becoming stronger than they were. 'I guess I should do my part…' He began training slowly of course, expanding his chakra control and reading his clan's scrolls. He learned about several techniques his dad had only told him about in passing but now he could master them.

Oddly enough he took to learning new jutsu easily he had kept this fact well hidden from everyone he knew, except perhaps his dad, these jutsu were the same.

Within a week he had learned three of the techniques and had continued to expand his combat knowledge. He read books on war strategy and ninja wars, he thought of strategies that would have work much better than the ones he had read about.

The village hidden in the Forest, Morigakure, was growing powerful, it would be nearly two years before they truly gained the attention of the ninja villages but when they did they would be treated with great respect. Two Jinchuuriki, one of the last Uchiha, two of the three sannin, three clans all regaining strength.

A/N: More Ocs to check out see which ones you like XD

This promiscuous female ninja has a thin build. She has scars on her legs. Her large eyes are black. She has red hair worn in a style that resembles a bale of hay. She uses a complicated form of martial arts that emphasizes confusing one's opponent.

Saru: This broken-hearted kunoichi is tall and has a slender build. Her large eyes are indigo. She has straight, short, green hair worn in an exotic style. She uses a complex form of martial arts that emphasizes flips. Her preferred weapons are crushing weapons. She can mentally shape acid.

Toxo (Please come up with a better name…): This committed ninja is short and has a broad-shouldered build. His beady eyes are teal. He has white hair worn in a long style that goes nearly to his feet. His outfit includes several bandanas. He is skilled in poison-making and using poisons.

This smooth ninja is very short and has a feminine build. His nose is upturned. His droopy eyes are black. He has straight, waist-length, yellow hair worn in an uncomplicated style. His preferred weapon is a cutlass.

This opinionated ninja has a graceful build. He has prominent cheekbones. His deep-set eyes are orange. He has straight, shoulder-length, black hair worn in a utilitarian style. His outfits are elegant and include an overlarge pair of boots. His preferred weapons are swords. He is skilled in socializing.

A/N2: I'm thinking about making an OC for Sasuke, that or living alone…forever…dun dun dun…

Did you read chapter 399? Here's what I think will happen next chapter and my thoughts about 399.

Chapter 400 Prediction

Total Crack…sorry…

Madara: Yes that is the truth of Konoha…

Sasuke: No way!!

Madara: Totally…dude it was crazy right?

Sasuke: Yeah

(Have they been smoking something?)

Madara: Now let us avenge our clan Sasuke! Makes Jiraiya dramatic pose and Sasuke does the 'good guy smile'

Madara: Piggy backing on Sasuke who is sweating… a lot. Forward my pack mule! Forward!

Sasuke: Why do I have to carry you can't you walk?

Madara: I'm old carry me damnit you emo bitch!

Sasuke keeps walking…

Naruto's group

Kakashi says something smart

Naruto: Blah…Sasuke…promise…Believe it! (I get the feeling Kishi hates Naruto…)

Kakashi: We should try to find them.

Kiba: I can't find any trace of him.

Naruto: this I'm ing tired of all this ! Sasgay!! (Wow…)

Naruto makes clones and they split into groups again…

Note from writers: No new chapter next week 'gathering materials' (I think this means he's rereading the manga trying to remember what he wrote…

The End

Madara made some wrong decisions. He just doesn't see it himself.

He was a powerful shinobi. He would've been a valuable asset to any other country he approached, much like Oro was to the guy who allowed him to create Otagakure.

Why didn't he leave and establish a power base in another country? With the power to control the kyuubi he could've headed a force that would've absolutely demolished Konoha. He could've taken over by force.

Instead he let his pride decide his actions. He felt snuffed when his clan rejected his bid for leadership. And instead of staying and proving that he was a worthy candidate, winning flies by honey, he instead screws over his clan for the next 80 years.

Much like Sasuke he refuses to let his past go. He keeps fighting for a cause/reason that is 80 years in the grave.

Yeah, I also believe he's lying about the second appearance of the kyuubi being a natural occurrence

this is madara in a way:

an unreliable narrator is a literary device in which the credibility of the narrator is seriously compromised. This unreliability can be due to psychological instability, a powerful bias, a lack of knowledge, or even a deliberate attempt to deceive the reader or audience.

Here is how Madara help destroy the clan as I see it.

-Senju calls for a truce and Madara reluctantly accepts.

-Hashirama is named Hokage and this angers Madara.

-Madara leaves, comes back with the kyuubi and loses to Hashirama.

-That act probably begins to stir some distrust with the other Uchias.

-Like 80 years passes by (maybe more) and the village is in relative peace...Uchias included.

-The kyuubi attacks the village which brings the focus of ANBU on the Uchias cause they are known to be able to control him.

-This causes the elders and Danzo to give the order to eliminate the Uchias, who apparently were planning a coup.

-MADARA & Itachi kills the Uchias.

Its a little rough but that's the jest of it...the Uchia demise starts and ends with Madara.

A/N3: (Crap these things are taking up a lot of room) Next chap will be more story then over stuff... The characters will be; Kiba, Shino, Shikamaru and an OC ninja.

Sorry for the short chapter the one I post over the weekend will be much longer…


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7 The New Team Seven

Chapter 7 The New Team Seven

Disclaimer: I don't own the world or characters…blah blah blah…

EdSpikeSesshyGirl: Thanks for the review. Yes Itachi and the Akatsuki will be making an appearance; they will be some of the main enemies of the village along with Kabuto. More on that in this chapter actually…

Three Years Later

Sasuke walked into the next room, high vaulted ceilings and several ninja lining the walls, in the center a man sitting on a throne.

"Sasuke Uchiha, the last Uchiha anyone can find in fact. It is good you have chosen to defect to us." The man said in a silky voice that didn't sound quite right coming from the large ninja. He was a mass of muscle a heavy axe sat next to him used only when he became angry, so quite often, he was the third nephew of the Mizukage and had control of one of the small islands between the mainland and the water country in his uncle's name. This island was one of the first on the list for Morigakure's expansion. With the Uchiha's betrayal the water country had gained the advantage. Or so they thought, they did not know that the sharingan eyes could be deactivated so they did not think it was odd when Sasuke looked around the room with them, only the two guards behind him and the man in the center of the room were not in the genjutsu. When the lightning charged needles cut into them no one could react. When he beheaded every ninja in the compound no one stopped him. When he passed out from exhaustion no one could kill him, they were already dead.

The next day he watched as wave ninja killed the rest of the ninja on the island, he watched as Naruto walked triumphantly through the village its citizens looking at them with hope in their eyes, they had never been treated kindly under the rule of the daimyo or his ninja.

Sasuke looked at Naruto's battle armor, gone was the bright orange jacket, what replaced it was a suit of armor quite like the one he himself now wore. The armor was that of the Senju clan design, their symbol was used for the village headbands also, Naruto's had the word Namikage, displayed on the back, and Sasuke's own back had the symbol of the Uchiha, just as Neji's had that of the Hyuuga. This was only ever worn when they were invading an island; it showed their wealth and their might. They wore their normal clothes when at home or on a mission.

In the three years since the founding of the village the mainland had been reduced to a constant state of war and then became peaceful again when the fighting stopped, the land once known as fire country had been cut up among the ninja villages and the new close boarders invited war to come in easily. The sound village lead by Kabuto, who apparently transplanted tissue from some of Orochimaru's supporters, had become one of the strongest villages in the world by taking over the land that was once the fire country. The rain village had become stronger they were lead by a group of nine unknown ninja they had taken over the wind, bird, grass, and river countries. The sand village had been all but destroyed, the lack of a leader had scattered the village and left the country open to attack, no one had claimed it yet.

The wave and mist were currently at war over the sea country islands, they were the only two ninja villages with 'navies' or boats manned by ninja who could fire from long distances. That was the waves strength in this war, they had ninja with different elements not just water, they would burn or slice or fry enemy boats.

Naruto while lead many of the island attacks Sasuke had wanted to see just how strong his sharingan had become though so this time he had came up with a plan. Naruto had certainly become stronger in the past two years, they all had, out of the rookie nine, team Gai, and the sand siblings the lowest rank was jounin (Kiba, Sakura, Ino, Shino, Temari, Kankurou, Ten Ten, Lee and Chouji), many were Anbu (Sasuke, Gaara, Neji, Shikamaru), Hinata was the leader of the Hyuuga clan, and Naruto the Namikage.

"You did good Sasuke." Naruto said walking up to him. Naruto was taller than Sasuke now taller even than Zabuza he was known to the world as one of the strongest kage, the wind blade, controller of the nine tailed demon, he had so many names the enemy didn't know who to say was attacking until they were cut in half by a wind blade or rasenganed into a wall. Sasuke too had changed, his skills were known across the world as some of the best, the silent killer, the lightning blade of the forest, sharingan Sasuke these were his names.

"Hn, a loser like you would know that how?" Sasuke joked.

"Shikamaru will be handling the creation of the government here. He says he wants a vacation anyway." Naruto said. "We should get you to the medics you're out of chakra…" Naruto grabbed the other man and dragged him towards the medic tent that was offering free medicine for the villagers.

Leaving the village the next day Naruto saw the village waving goodbye to the ninja who had invaded just the day before. Naruto laughed. It was the same at every village the mist ninja were cruel and unforgiving. They had found a small clan of ninja with bloodline traits hiding on one of the concurred islands from the mist village. They had joined the forest village the next day adding nearly fifty strong fighters to their numbers. During the war Naruto had fought a separate war, one of taking in all of the orphans, they didn't want to leave their homes but in the end with the promise of food, shelter, and understanding they had joined. These ninja now bolstered the once small ranks of the forest. What was once a village of refugees was now a military establishment. They had taken in the small forgotten clans that the old villages had forced away and they had steadily grown until the former leaf ninja where just a quarter of the ninja and children in the village.

The wave country had grown, taking all of the islands between it and the water country, the sea country, tea country, and soon the water country itself.

Tazuna was truly the one who gained the most out of this; he had an ever growing country of people who loved his government, the people were happy to pay taxes so long as the ninja protected them. Unlike the mainland there were often pirates, monsters, and other things that ninja needed to do that kept a constant demand for them. The village hidden in the forest grew; several of the richer islands now had secondary villages lead by Naruto's most trusted.

Upon returning to the village he was greeted by a grinning Iruka. "I already heard about your victory Namikage Naruto." He said. "I'm happy to say that the next year's students will be graduating tomorrow."

"Good." Naruto said wondering were this was going.

"You know Naruto there are some things you should do before you get too old. Perhaps you should take a genin team." He suggested slyly.

"What are you talking about?" Naruto asked he had never wanted a genin team before why would he want one now?

"Well you see all of the Hokage were trained by someone who was a kage or trained by one, Sakura, Sasuke and you are the last three that meet this. Sakura has refused and Sasuke is in the Anbu so he can not take a team full time. The only person who can is you." Iruka said smiling.

"I'm the Namikage I have to do paperwork…" Naruto said it wasn't really true he had created clones two years ago that still worked every day on the hours of paperwork that sat at the village leader's desk for no apparent reason.

"Liar, everyone in the village knows you haven't done any paperwork in two years." Iruka said holding out a piece of paper. "That's your team number, try not to be late Naruto." Yes, even though he was the kage he could still be bossed around by Iruka, a feat few people dared except for Jiraiya and Tsunade.

"A genin team…what have I gotten myself into?"

The next day

"Team seven will be, Gereso Uruami, Merawako Ahuya, and Hina Tadei." Iruka said to the class.

Gereso a ninja not from the land of fire had come to the village when he was very young; his entire family was ninja their eyes a low level doujutsu that let them see in any amount of light perfectly. Also unique to his clan were the use of tattoos to focus and manipulate chakra. He was brave all he wanted to do was prove he was better than his brother who was already a jounin even though he was only three years out of the academy. He has sky blue hair that resembles a flame. He was amazing at both taijutsu and genjutsu. He wares many strong chains going around both arms and up his sleeves and perhaps covering his entire body.

Merawako has scarlet hair worn in a style that resembles a flowing river. He wears a red trench coat and uses red playing cards, with sharp edges, as weapons. He uses the wind element to turn the cards into dangerous flying blades. He considers Gereso his rival because he is the only one who never noticed Merawako as second in the class.

Hina, Tadei as she preferred to be called, has white hair that resembles flower petals, two katana held in her belt, she was perhaps the worst student in the class doing the worse work with ninjutsu and genjutsu. Her sword work however was some of the best Iruka had ever seen at her age. Naruto could do a lot with her if she focused and let him teach her.

"Where is this guy, Naruto Namikaze, have you ever heard of him Merawako?" Tadei complained.

"No." Merawako said, he was surprised that she actually talked to him most of the girls just blushed at his good looks and said hi.

"He's here…" A voice said from behind all three of them. They all looked up at the Namikage who stood at the catwalk closest to their class room. "I've been here for two hours and yet you never looked. As ninja you should always be on the outlook for danger. My first impression is not a good one."

"Lord Namikage you are our instructor?" Gereso asked.

"Obviously you're the stupid one." Naruto said offhandedly. "Ok let's get this over with; I want to know a little about all of you, name, goals, likes dislikes."

"What do you mean?" Merawako asked. "Can you give an example?"

"Right…My name is Naruto Namikaze, I like ramen, my friends, fighting and learning new jutsu. I dislike many things so I don't feel like sharing. My goal is to protect this village and the people in it even if I die doing so. Now why don't you start?" He said pointing at Merawako.

"My name is Merawako Ahuya. I like training, reading, and working with others. I dislike people who are selfish and a restaurant not having a bathroom. My goal is to be a great ninja so my dad will be proud of me." He said looking at his teacher.

"The girl next." Naruto said.

"My name is Tadei. I like very few things. I dislike Iruka's lectures (Naruto laughed at this), people talk during movies, and perverts. My goal is to become one of the swordsmen of this village." Only Naruto himself could make that goal become reality, he was the leader of the five swordsmen, Sasuke, Kohonamaru, Asuma, and Shikamaru were the others in this group.

"Next please."

"Gereso Uruami. I have no reason to share anything with you beyond that, this is all just an exercise to see how we respond right?" He asked. Naruto laughed at this, it wasn't he like Kakashi had actually wanted to know about the people he might have to train.

"No, your wrong, horribly so. I wanted to know about you to see what to expect of you in the future." Naruto was completely disappointed by this point and he had come in expecting the worse.

"Ok I'll give you all a chance, go home but don't eat dinner; if you do you'll end up regretting it tomorrow. Meet me at training platform seven." Naruto left.

The next day

They were on time, luckily because if they had been late Naruto would have dropped them right there. The training area was one of the smallest, barely enough room for a dozen tree branches. In the center were three wooden posts; behind those was a leaf symbol and hundreds of names the ones of those who died in the defense of Konoha.

"Good you're all here. Now today is your final test, if you don't pass this you can't become a genin." Naruto said simply.

"What? We already graduated how can we not be ninja?" Tadei asked.

"You can not be alive…" Naruto started but left the empty threat open. It worked however, the large sword on his back and light battle armor he wore, not as heavy as the armor he wore when invading an island but it worked just as well and gave him more mobility. "As it is only two of you will have the ability to become genin today. You see only two of you can get these." He held up two small bells that the young ninja watched. "If you can't get a bell by lunch you don't get to eat." He smiled remembering his own reaction when Kakashi had done this.

"You have to be joking, this is cruel. You are making us kill one of our teammates to kill." Gereso said.

"Maybe you aren't getting it. You have to get a bell, I have the bells and I'm going to keep you from the bells. How you get them and what you do after that is up to you." Naruto explained. "Now since I've explained the test. You can start."

Tadei jumped forward, swords drawn quicker than the untrained eye could see, Naruto who had trained with a sharingan user and Lee for years could see the move as if it was normal movement. His own sword was pulled from his back. The three blades all hit making a loud ringing sound. Gereso jumped forward taking thinking that both of his teacher's hands would be holding the blade. He was punched to the floor and saw Merawako jump over him with two cards in his hands, he tried to cut into the Namikage but the sound of shattering metal was followed by Merawako being slammed in the stomach with the flat of the sword sending him spinning away.

"Taijutsu, two of you are average, the other is just pathetic." The younger ninja had hidden in nearby in the tree limbs. Gereso thought of a plan, this guys weakness is genjutsu, he is a master of taijutsu and I've heard he's good at ninjutsu so that must be his weakness. He jumped in front of the man and four of the tattoos on his arms glowed black.

Chains surrounded Naruto Gereso was below him on a platform, everything was dark except for the light given off by the golden chains that were wrapped around his arms and legs. Gereso clapped his hands together and the chains began to move. Naruto felt his body being ripped to shreds by the chains. The clone too was ripped apart the chakra it was made of not knowing the difference between reality and genjutsu. The bell in Gereso's hand disappeared with it.

"Genjutsu, I train with a master of genjutsu, Sasuke Uchiha. Your pitiful attempts to fool me are going to get you killed." Naruto said from behind him. Everything went black, the dark mist around them blocked out all of the light. Naruto smiled as he heard the boy come towards him. "I take it back you are good at taijutsu." He said blocking the chains that came from the darkness. "I take it you can still see me. A doujutsu, I should have known when I saw your eyes, no pupils just black."

Gereso sent three more chains towards the man. All were blocked he heard his teachers blade spinning in the darkness, clearing the black mist with wind chakra. 'Damn it!' He retreated back to the trees.

Tadei was too stunned to move, those swords had been special to her, and she had bought them with her own money after saving for years. Her dad had not let her use them however and they sat unused in their home. When her father didn't come back from a mission one day she started wearing the swords to school, she was naturally skilled with them and nothing else. Tears spilled from her eyes. When she saw the black mist form around Gereso and Naruto she had thought it was over, Gereso was the best he never lost, then he retreated a scared look on his face. She had no more weapons, no kunai she could never aim them right, no blast notes, nothing, she could barely make clones. She began to cry falling into a pit of self-loathing. 'Why can't I do anything right?'

Merawako smiled, he had a plan that was far better than his teammates, if taijutsu and genjutsu didn't work then he would use ninjutsu.

He jumped from his branch four cards in each hand he threw the wind imbued cards at the kage and can forward pulling out a scroll. Naruto met the cards with a heavenly wind spin which sent them off in different directions and knocking the other two from their perches. He used the scroll as he came closer; it summoned a card larger than his body with held Naruto's sword at bay.

"Come on! If we all attack at once he can't take us!" He yelled to the others who agreed, Gereso tossed Tadei a kunai and all three turned as one to face Naruto. He had cut the thick metal card easily with his wind blade and had not attacked simply to watch what the boy came up with.

He knocked all three of them down easily laughing as he did so. "It's twelve. You haven't beaten me. Tadei, you want to be a hero correct?" He asked.

"Yes." She growled.

"Do you see that stone, the one with all the names on it?"

"So what about it?" She asked angrily.

"Those are the names of heroes. The people who died in Konoha three years ago. The people who died to defend our lives."

"I'm not from Konoha." She said angrily, one of the ninja from this village had taken her during the war; she went willingly to the food, shelter, religion and friends they had offered her.

"So? None of you are. All of you came later but your lives would have been much worse if it weren't for those people. Gereso, you are from a bloodline clan in the water country islands you would have lived your entire life in hiding if we had not survived. Merawako, you and your father were saved by Shikamaru and Chouji, two of my friends, during an invasion on one of the islands, your father had been a disgraced ninja who only wanted you to be a ninja the mist village would have never given you that chance. Tadei you were an orphan living on your own, my friend Kiba brought you here two years ago because you were alone."

"I see." Gereso said nodding.

"Right." Tadei agreed.

"Thank you sir." Merawako said.

He held out his hand smiling. "Congratulations, you pass." He laughed remembering how long it took his team to figure this out.

"What?" Tadei yelled replacing sorrow and loathing with anger. "You…you…" She couldn't tell her teammates about the broken swords importance.

"I was testing you, forest ninja work in teams because that is how ninja best operate. If one of you can not beat an opponent then one of the other two should be able to." Naruto smiled putting his sword in its proper place. "You passed, and you gave me a few surprises."

They walked away, Tadei turned back to talk to Naruto.

"Those swords you broke were special to him." Naruto smiled at her.

"I understand…this sword is special to me too. I've had it broken many times and repaired every time. Today Merawako could have killed me if I didn't stop him. I thought about myself before you and I'm sorry. All I can do is offer to replace them. That and get you training to use those swords." He looked at the younger girl and smiled again. "One day, if you train hard enough, you might just be strong enough to join us." She jumped joyously at this.

"Thank you sensei, thank you so much." She squealed.

A/N: I hope you liked it. Thanks for all the reviews today, three in all…It's nice to be thought of.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Disclaimer: You know by now don't you?

Naruto had never been the most romantic person quite the opposite in fact. For the last three years Hinata had chosen most of the dates they went on. This time however Naruto said he had the 'perfect' place to go to. It was one of those small walk-in food stalls he loved so much. When they walked in three young genin noticed him.

"Namikage sensei what are you doing here?" Tadei asked loudly pointing her chopsticks at him.

"I'm on a date actually." He answered gesturing at Hinata.

"Here? This is kind of a teenager hangout." She replied without thinking of Naruto's age.

"I'm three years older than you are, and you aren't teens yet so why are you three here?" He said annoyed.

"How are you the kage if you're so young?" She asked avoiding his question.

"I got voted in." He said remembering Jiraiya's vote.

"How many people voted for you?" Hinata laughed knowing the answer.

"One, everyone else voted for someone who didn't want the position." Naruto said getting very annoyed.

"Who was that one vote, it wasn't you right? It's rude to vote for yourself you know." Tadei asked looking at the older ninja.

"The person who didn't want the position of course."

"So no one wanted you?"

"No, actually he had been our leader since the destruction of Konoha. You wouldn't recognize him back then; he was shorter and a lot louder. He made huge boasts and when he started to back them up everyone realized that he was stronger than they had though he was. Jiraiya voted for him because he knew that Naruto would die to protect the village if he had to. He cares more about the village than he does about himself sometimes." Hinata interjected before Naruto got angry, he still had some of that old temper that would flare up once in awhile. Luckily Tadei seemed satisfied with this.

"Naruto, Hinata…I didn't know you two would be here." Sasuke said from the door, the owner was getting very angry because they were all talking and not ordering food.

"Hey idiot I see your feeling better." Naruto smiled at him. "These three are my genin team…Iruka forced them on me."

Sasuke laughed looking over the three genin proudly wearing their forest headbands. "I can't believe he suckered you into teaching children."

"Watch who you call children pal!" Tadei yelled. Sasuke smiled and pulled his sword from his belt and slapping it on her face.

"Quicker than the eyes can see, even my sharingan can barely see my sword movements. You are a child compared to me." Sasuke said in a quiet voice so only she could hear.

Her eyes widened in shock at the sight of the sword as Naruto ordered his third bowl of ramen and continued watching. Hinata ordered her own food and watched as well.

"Who do you think you are?" She asked her voice had lost its volume and confidence.

"Sasuke Uchiha." He said in an even voice. Her eyes widened to an extreme and Hinata saw a blush form on the younger girl's cheeks. Everyone knew about Sasuke, he was a hero, a legend, and not bad looking. Gereso watched with more interest and Merawako looked up from his food. "Learn some respect, discipline might help too."

He moved to the counter taking his blade and returning it to its normal position. "I'll have the miso pork ramen please."

"That was like dinner and a show!" Naruto said excitedly finishing off his sixth bowl. Hinata had finished her first and they paid then left. "Tadei your training with Sasuke tomorrow. Sasuke find her a sword to use." He added as he left laughing evilly.

Kiba had also been given a genin team, when he saw Naruto later that evening he approached him about their circumstances.

"So how do you like your group of brats?" He asked the village leader.

"I just pawned one off to Sasuke for training, the other two will be just as skilled as she will be by the time I'm done training them. Other than that I think I like them. They all want something even if Gereso won't admit it. What about yours?" The blonde asked.

"One of them is a cousin of mine; another is a Hyuuga, and one of Shino's clan. Completely different from my team, two dogs, and Hyuuga who smiles all the time and a Shino clone." Kiba smiled. "The Hyuuga have really changed. Even Neji smiles once in awhile, not that anyone can tell under that mask. They even seem happy."

"Hinata told me a lot about how the clan was run back in Konoha they didn't care about each other at all. Hell even her sister stopped caring about her when she was beaten by Neji. It's definitely different now we all can see how she has changed and I know she has changed her clan into something she is proud of." Naruto said proudly thinking of her as the person who changed a clan.

"Konoha, I remember you said we would return there one day." Kiba stated, few people brought this up. Konoha was controlled by the sound village they could see sound ninja watching from the bridge everyday.

"You heard about Kabuto! He killed an entire contingent of lightning ninja by himself; I'm not letting the people of this village go against that yet." Naruto hissed angrily. "You know most of these people don't trust us yet damn it! You know the reason too, me and Gaara because of the demons." This was a sensitive subject for a reason and Kiba now knew to leave it well enough alone.

"You're right sorry for hurting your feelings." Kiba said quickly cutting Naruto off.

"Well I best be off, training tomorrow." Naruto said waving.

The next day

"Well you two are ok with taijutsu for now, but your ninjutsu needs a lot of work. Merawako you can use elemental manipulation and that's amazing considering your age, but you have no ninjutsu to use it with right? Gereso, you are amazing with genjutsu but when someone breaks out of that and long ranges you what are you or your teammates going to do?" Naruto asked.

"Well I could create my assassin mist and…" He was cut off by Naruto.

"Walk so loudly you get your head cut off even though you can see."

"I could slash them up with my cards…"

"Possibly killing Gereso in the process."

"Then what do we do sensei?" Gereso asked not likening how he was the one dying in all of these scenarios.

"Easy you hope that you can use fire, water, earth, or lightning alignment." Naruto said pulling out two pieces of paper. He gave one to each of the boys.

"Gereso focus your chakra into the card. Merawako focus yours into the card but don't add wind chakra at all." They nodded and did as they were told. Merawako's became soggy while Gereso's turned black. "Interesting, your clan's mist attack what is it?"

"My dad explained it to me once, it's kind of like a shadow that we create and can make as dense as we want. Why?" Gereso looked at his teacher.

"Well you see there are only five types of elements but there are also shadows. They are special because they are usually a genetically inherited trait. There is only one only person I know from outside of your clan who can use shadows. You'll be training with him once he returns in a few days." With that he turned to Merawako. "You have the same two elements I started with so this will be easy hopefully. Because you already know one element your second will be easier to learn. Until Shikamaru gets back we'll be training with taijutsu, both of you against one of my clones."

Sasuke had brought two matching swords for her to use. The black blades had the Uchiha symbol on the hilt.

"Remember what I told you yesterday respect and discipline." He said pulling his own blade from his belt.

"Whatever let's just start." She growled.

"If you want to." Sharingan activated he slashed out at the girl who barely managed to block the attack. The only reason the swords didn't shatter was because of their amazing quality. "That's one of your problems, you don't know how to block right. We'll work on that." She struck out aggressively at him trying to prove she was good with the blades. "Just because you are naturally skilled at something doesn't make you a master, you need years of training to be a proficient fighter. You need skills in other areas also."

"I'm sorry I'm not as perfect as you or the Namikage! I'm not that naturally skilled!" She yelled.

"You think that Naruto was naturally that skilled? He was pathetic back in the academy, dead last in every subject there was. He only became a genin after being betrayed by a chunin and creating a thousand shadow clones. You have no idea how hard our road to power was, if it weren't for each other we would have died along time ago when we first came to this island. We both lost our families, Naruto never even got to know his family and mine was taken from me when I was seven!" Sasuke rarely showed this much emotion around anyone but Naruto but Tadei was pushing on a sensitive subject.

He lashed out with his sword accidentally cutting into her arm. Her eyes widened with fear at his fury and the pain in her arm. "Please stop!" She cried. He stopped and looked at her holding her bleeding arm.

"Your lucky I'm not your enemy, you would have died just now." He said in a low angry voice that made her cringe.

"Get some people skills asshole." She said angrily pulling out a first aid kit and bandaging her arm. She wiped away the forming tears and grabbed her swords pointing them at him."

"No, now it's time for you to train, I'll teach you all of the basic attack and defense stances."

Gereso had some of the best moves for a genin Naruto had seen since Lee and Neji. He was still having trouble with the clone however. His chain moves were something to see the shining metal wrapping around a clone only to crush a stump, then cut prefect lunch meat out of some ham. When the clone beat him to the ground Naruto offered him a sandwich.

Merawako however was like watching an amazing dance with dangerous cards and blades of wind. The scrolls he kept on his belt had many cards of varying sizes, and many effects. Some were the size of a hand and exploded violently. To some that were thicker than three of his swords and even his wind blade had trouble cutting through.

When both looked up to him beaten and tired he smiled. "Don't worry about losing, I wasn't going easy on you so you shouldn't feel bad about it. You both fought well, after the month of training, we will be going on missions. As you know we are currently at war with the water country. Most of your missions will revolve around the new islands we are gaining and possibly fighting the left over ninja on said islands. After three months the chunin exam will be taking place in this village." Gereso and Merawako looked at him wanting more information, none was forth coming.

"So Naruto sir how exactly do you expect to win the war so quickly?" Gereso asked.

"I don't, in fact the plan is to have them attack during the third round of the exam. When they do attack we will be ready you see we will have many ninja teams out on missions, all of them low rank, people will see that as a weakness because so many ninja will be out. On the day of the final exam all of those ninja will be waiting right outside of the village and when the attack happens they charge in." Naruto explained quietly.

"So what part do we play in all of this?" Gereso asked and Merawako nodded.

"Well did you think it was just chance that the best two students got placed in the same team? Iruka did balance you out with Tadei but she'll be good enough by the time of the exam so you don't need to worry about her. The first exam has been rigged so that you three can't lose, the other two will be up to you. But I warn you now, you will have to kill in the third exam but only if you fight mist ninja. The second exam time has been extended so that you have more time to fight opponents, hopefully mist ninja." Naruto explained.

"I think we got it…" Merawako said nodding.

"Well that's not good enough for me." Naruto said looking towards the sky hoping they would do well.

"Don't worry Namikage we'll make you proud." Gereso said firmly.

"You know Naruto you're placing a lot of pressure on those three." The masked man said at a level below a whisper and even though they were a good twenty feet away the Namikage heard the words.

"Since when do you care about little genin?" The tall blonde asked the shadowed figure. Sand crept around the person body following him like a trained pet.

"Since you taught me." He slipped the mask off, his spiked red hair showing under the hood her wore. "How have things been Naruto?"

"Difficult, training a bunch of kids to think of ninja life for what it really is might just prove to be difficult." Naruto laughed looking at the raccoon eyed teen standing near him.

"So what do you think is going to happen when the other villages come?" Gaara asked his voice so low Naruto strained to hear it.

"They have to be peaceful, a war would be bad for everyone right now, every village is sending in ninety nine genin no more no less it's just to much to loss if they attack. Anyway do you really expect them to attack? We've put the word out that both of us will be here for the next three months if not longer." Naruto said.

"So do you think the hidden rain might attack also? They are the ones who want to kill us. Akatsuki is leading the village; their leader killed the legendary leader of that country if you remember that information gathering mission during the war." Gaara responded. It was true during the war Naruto had used clones to sneak into the rain village only to find that the village had been destroyed and a new hidden rain village had taken its place in the world. A man who was calling himself a god was leading both the Akatsuki and the rain village.

"Yeah I remember. Look they won't attack, they know we can kill all of their children before they finish entering the forest." Naruto said in a low voice.

"I see. I will leave it too you then. Good luck Naruto." He was gone in a poof leaving only a small amount of sand behind.

A/N I think I done with this chapter…yeah looks like next chapter will be Merawako and Naruto training, Shikamaru and Gereso training and Tadei learning how to use the perfect 'body flicker' jutsu.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto…yet…dun dun dun…peace out man…dun…dun…doo

"So you're Gereso eh?" Shikamaru said lazily, his mesh shirt covered his now scared body a curved blade hung loosely from his belt, the forest headband on his arm held a kunai twice the normal size was visible to everyone. "You can use shadow mist right? I fought with someone from your clan before. She told me everyone in your clan develops their own jutsu that use the shadow mist."

"Yeah that's what my brother told me." Gereso nodded.

"The black mist eye doujutsu one of the lower rank doujutsu, your clan is one of two known to have this doujutsu, the other clan has the ability to shape light instead of shadow however. I have a surprise for you, six of the people from the cloud village are from that clan, and they will probably be looking for you. So I guess I need to train you to mold shadows right? Well let's start. First create a large cloud of mist then condense it." Shikamaru began teaching him how to mold shadows into different shapes and how to condense it and expand it. A week later he had began to use the tattoos his clan had given him to shape the chakra shadows into shapes Shikamaru told him to make. The older ninja used shadows very differently, gaining control of his opponent's body then taking them out usually with ease.

"Remember it's always good to gauge your opponents chakra use, it they are reserving there is a reason, if they are going all out then they're trying to get through you. Over the next few days I'll be going over hundreds of scenarios and you will be coming up with responses to them. While you think of your answer you will continue to shape the shadows as best you can so we know you can think about doing two things at the same time." This proved to be extremely difficult, Shikamaru had expected this, even though Gereso was a genius it was hard to both shape and think of a strategy at the same time, he would often drift into only doing one and not the other only to have Shikamaru hit him over the head when he would answer too slowly or too quickly. It took nearly all of his training but he was getting a hang of it. Shikamaru wondered how Naruto was doing with his other male genin.

"So water chakra is a lot different from wind manipulation. Wind is used mostly for attack as you know but water is far more versatile. With water you can attack from long distances, stop your opponent in their tracks, and defend yourself and your teammates." Naruto paused to gauge Merawako's understanding.

"Sir I was wondering how am I supposed to use water techniques if I have no water to use?" He asked.

"Don't worry I have a plan for that." Naruto laughed. "First I need to teach you to use water manipulation, hopefully that won't take too long. Well first off water is almost impossible to create water with just chakra as you know, so it is used mostly near oceans and large rivers. You can summon water using scrolls or perhaps cards that summon water. Luckily we have a large amount of water around us," He gestured to the swampy water that was always at the base of the forest village, the smell was rather bad but when Naruto moved his hand over that water and some of the liquid moved towards his hand Merawako forgot the stench. "It's easy to bend and manipulate, if you get good enough and strong enough you can actually make water from the air, it's a combination of two…I'm getting ahead of myself here sorry." He said excitedly.

"Now to use water manipulation you have to infuse your chakra into the water and keep it flowing like a current, keep the chakra moving and the water will follow, then using the right hand seals the water will shape into the jutsu you want it to." Naruto performed several hand seals and the water formed around Merawako like a bubble, but when he tried to breakout he found it quite impenetrable. He saw that his teacher was keeping contact with the prison. "If I stop touching this water you will be able to move again." He move his arm and the water fell drenching Merawako.

"Sir I'll try." He touched the water with his palm and sent chakra into it. Naruto pushed him off of the root he was sitting on into deeper water.

"First you have to learn to walk on water." Merawako looked at him in surprise. "This shouldn't take too long hopefully, Iruka taught you chakra control right? You can walk on trees correct?" Naruto had had those two things added to the academy curriculum because of their village being so high up he didn't want anyone to fall to their death.

"Of course I can anyone can do that." He said off handedly. Naruto smirked at this.

"Well don't get too happy…walking on water is a bit harder…" Naruto sighed wondering how Sasuke was doing.

"Faster!" Sasuke yelled at her, she was learning the body flash technique, she had a just above average speed at it but she had the potential to become almost as fast as Sasuke and at least as fast as Naruto. "Focus the chakra faster, don't focus so much on where your going just getting there. Don't…" Whap! He had been having her attack him every time her flickered, he had blocked every time but this time she had moved fast enough to leave a chakra illusion and attack at the same time, unfortunately for him her blade had left a red mark on the side of his face. He cursed himself silently for not paying close enough attention. "Ok time for a good nights sleep." He said in a voice just barely audible. It was late almost midnight.

"Ok." She said walking off. She had barely said two words to him since he had hurt her. It was the first time a girl had truly ignored him, she had even scratched the Uchiha symbols from the hilts of the swords. It was better in some ways, she no longer cared about his sharingan or his clan's fame, and instead she attacked him like he was an enemy, violently trying to get the blade into his heart. He had used her anger to fuel her learning and it worked, almost too well. She was progressing at a rate he could barely believe possible with such little drive.

"Meet me here at our normal time tomorrow…" She was already gone. It was odd he always seemed to push girls away even if he didn't mean to. Sakura had been his friend during the war but he disliked the way she clung to him every time they would talk…

_Flashback_

"_Sakura could you please not hold onto me like that?" Sasuke asked the girl with the long pink hair. _

_She looked at him inquiringly "What do you mean Sasuke?"_

"_You hang on me like you're actually in love with me…it's odd…I don't feel the same way about you so it makes me very uncomfortable." He tried to explain as kindly as he could. She didn't take it well unfortunately. She glared at him then started yelling incoherently until Naruto showed up investigating a 'disturbance of the peace' reported by the villagers and asked Sakura to stop yelling so loudly. _

She rarely talked to either of them now Ino was her closest friend in the rookie nine and she stayed mostly at the hospital. It was odd every time she had helped him after a mission; there was no longer a smile on her face, no longer a crush just a passing acceptance of his presence.

In a way Tadei was right he needed to work on his people skills, but just the ones towards girls. Hinata and a few of the Anbu were the only ones he really got along with. He wasn't like Naruto, a lucky romantic able to find love because of a mistake. Or Neji who was a master with the spoken and unspoken, he could gauge a girl faster than any man in the village. He wasn't like Jiraiya, the old man had moves that put even Neji to shame he would often tell the younger ninja of his sexual conquests, both past and recent. Shikamaru was forced into a relationship with Temari, often kicking a screaming. Even Lee said he had a 'special person' he often alluded to this mystery girl, though Sasuke had noticed he never talked about his love life in front of Shikamaru or girls…which was odd even for Lee.

Sasuke considered himself pathetic in that one aspect, it was his largest failure in his eyes.

It was the first time team seven had been together in a month, they actually greeted each other warmly which surprised Naruto.

"Well now that you have all trained so diligently let the D-rank missions begin…" Twenty minutes later they were in the mission hall. They had been given a mission for the Daimyo Tazuna, who wanted them to over see some minor repairs on some of the bridges connecting the broken island the village was on.

"This is boring…" Tadei complained as they accompanied the dozen repairmen through the swampy water that surrounded the village, as the water became clearer they saw more bridges and the men got to work.

"Why is it that they need protection?" Gereso asked Naruto so only the ninja were the only ones who could hear.

"Well in most cases they don't, other than that just incase someone gets hurt a ninja can get them out of here faster than a normal person, and just incase there just happens to be a pirate or swamp shark out here." Naruto explained. "Just think of it as training for later missions. D-rank missions will build your knowledge of how missions work and you will be able to tolerate getting your own missions without me later on."

"What a load of—" Tadei started.

"No need to complain Tadei, someone has to do these types of missions, would you rather be a jounin gathering trash all day?" Tadei gave up outnumbered and bored she just watched the men repair the bridge.

The next day found team seven getting a mission to clean trash in the swampy waters under the village.

"I'm never throwing my trash out into the forest again." Tadei said angrily as she picked up the disgusting trash that reeked like the water. Merawako was actually moving the water to put the trash in his bag. Naruto stood watching the three genin wade through the murky water, he was on the lookout there had been reports of a swamp shark in the area. Normally the sharks avoided the village but they had been multiplying lately and getting more daring when hungry. He did see a fin once and had pulled a kunai out, Gereso had noticed and now watched the roots nearby more carefully.

"Think of it as training…" Merawako said off handedly. "Anyway what do you care, you got paid yesterday for the mission right?"

"So, it was only a little, I already spent it." She answered.

"You should have saved it. Save all your money from these D-rank missions then buy yourself something you really need, or just keep saving for a rainy day." Merawako sighed at the end feeling the money in his own pocket.

"What about you sensei? How much money do you have?" Tadei asked loudly.

"I have enough." Naruto answered still looking over the water. It was more than true, in the first year of the village's existence Naruto had done almost all of the D-rank and C-rank missions and had gone along with Sasuke, or one of his other friends for many of the B-rank missions. Not to mention his take of the money from wiping feudal lords off the map, the taxes he collected for protecting the villages. For the first time in his life he had more money than he knew what to do with. He rarely thought about his finances, he gave most of his money to the orphans that were brought to the village, the rest was saved or spent.

"What about you Gereso?" She continued.

"I get an allowance so I'm not worried about how much I make for missions." He answered.

"Merawako?" The boy let out a sigh and pulled out his wallet, only some of the money from the last days mission was in it.

"So I'm the only one with no money left over from yesterday?" She asked and all the others nodded. Naruto looked away for just a second and the shark attacked. It was only a foot tall and six feet long but had rows of razor sharp teeth that ripped flesh in an instant, brown-green skin that blended almost perfectly with the water it lived in. It nearly bit him but luckily Gereso had seen it jump from the water and had tossed a kunai at it grazing the flesh and slowing its assent into the air. Deciding to let his genin take care of this shark Naruto felt content to watch from above.

Gereso tried to catch the thing on his chains but it slipped between the chains every time. Tadei flickered after the shark almost cutting into it several times. They lead it towards Merawako who was performing hand seals, when the shark got close enough he made a water prison, the shark could only stay out of the water a few minutes before running out of air and dying in the prison, Merawako kept it held in the prison for several minutes after to make sure.

"Good job, all three of you. That was a rather small shark but you were able to kill it." Naruto smiled then continued. "Do any of you know the origins of the swamp shark?"

Gereso nodded and began to talk, "The swamp shark started a medium size fish that lived here long before the village was created, because of all the chakra from above some of the fish began to grow larger than the others, those fish became more like sharks and ninja began calling them swamp sharks."

"Correct, you should all understand that when chakra is introduced to animals that have had no contact with chakra before can changed into something different." Naruto looked over the small clearing. "I think we're done here, let's go get paid…"

A/N: I hope you liked…Thanks for all the reviews, 9 while I'm typing this (more now that I've posted), Thanks for all of your support, feel free to ask questions about the oc's. I didn't mean to make Tadei seem like such a Mary Sue…it just happened…


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

"Ok, team seven looks like your going to get your first C-rank mission today. You will be guarding a few new academy students coming from the new island today." The receptionist said to Gereso who was getting the scroll for the team. He nodded and took the scroll then took off towards their meeting place.

"We have a C-rank mission today." He said in his low voice as he approached Merawako and Tadei who were playing a game with Merawako's cards. "Looks like its baby sitting a bunch of seven and eight year olds back here…"

"Not necessarily…don't you remember coming to the village Gereso? Mist ninja watched your boat all the way until forest ninja took them out." Naruto said walking towards the genin. Gereso remembered back the two years he had been on an island much closer and when the mist ninja were a lot stronger.

"You've taken out some of the mist's greatest ninja, they only have a fraction of the ninja they once had." Gereso said not worrying about the mission's possible dangers.

"Which is exactly why this mission is so dangerous, the mist village is falling apart and running out of money, this means that the ninja and kage of the village will desperate to kill any forest ninja they come by. Don't worry I'll do my best to protect you. The trip to the island takes about a day and we will be on a large boat so you three will be training the entire time."

Two hours later

Tadei's blades came down on Naruto's long sword in a resounding crash, she moved one blade to the underside locking them both in place. Naruto knowing that if attacked the girl at that moment she would just flicker away, stood waiting for one of the boy's to attack. Merawako took the chance and a large dragon made of water lunged towards Naruto. The Namikage held out a hand and sent a surge of wind chakra at the watery beast splitting it in half. Now Merawako could use the water on the deck of the boat to attack, or he could trap Naruto in a watery prison. Before he could act however Gereso sent a sharp shadow tendril towards their sensei, it cut into the arm holding the sword in place, the sudden and unexpected pain caused him to flinch just enough for Tadei to be able to twist the sword from his hand. As it fell to the floor the three genin moved in to attack him. He spun just once in midair and sent out a strong shockwave of chakra tossing all of them away. Gereso tossed five of his chains at the Kage hoping to stall for time for the over two to recover and to come up with a plan. Naruto however reacted differently than he had expected as the chains were not just blocked but sent in wild directions by another surge of chakra. 'How can he keep doing that and not be tired?' Gereso thought trying to bring the chains back to him unfortunately he couldn't keep them moving the way he wanted and three slammed into the boat effectively making Gereso a sitting duck. Merawako pulled out three cards hoping to be able to slow Naruto, all three were brushed away with another wave of chakra. 'He isn't even using manipulation, just sending out waves of chakra continuously.' Merawako observed.

"I think they lose Naruto." Kiba said from a few feet away. He and his own genin team had been watching the show they had been putting on since a little after leaving from the port. Two other genin teams were on the boat watching amazed at the show they called training. Kiba however had trained with Naruto for years and knew most of what to expect from the Kage, except for the new move made up at the on set of the fight. "They did ok though, they pushed you into using chakra waves in only twenty minutes."

"I haven't even begun to fight yet…" He said back picking up his sword. "…can you keep going Merawako? Gereso? Tadei?" To both his and Kiba's surprise the genin nodded getting onto shaky legs and pulling out weapons. "Good you continue a to fight an opponent you have no hopes of betting for no apparent reason. That comes in handy when you get to die for something considered a 'good cause'" Naruto looked over the three genin, they put away their weapons and sat down under the shade of a tarp that they had set up before leaving.

"Damn it how did he get so strong if he was weak when he graduated…" Tadei said to her teammates.

"Well he may have just been bad at using basic jutsu taught at the academy, when he was introduced to higher level ninjutsu he took to them better than the basics." Gereso said.

"No, it's his chakra can't you feel it? It's so different from normal peoples like he's a fountain of endless chakra, just look at how he pushed us away and blocked our attacks, just a wave of energy." Merawako replied through gritted teeth.

"He's just too strong for us for now…" Tadei groaned.

"Naruto went easy on you." Kiba said laughing. "He could crush you three all at once if he wanted to. You know he was weak once, the weakest ninja ever if you ask anyone really, but now he's on a kage level, believe me you haven't seen anything until you watch two kage level ninja fight."

"I see." Gereso said looking at Kiba. "Where do you think we are compared to the other genin who will be competing this year?" Kiba laughed at the sudden question.

"Look let's just say you need some practice but you will be a cut above the others simply because most of the villages are graduating genin just to have them compete, if you want to do the mission you were given then you do need to get better." He said seriously he looked at his own team, Haru, his cousin, and her two dog counter parts sat playing a game. Hana, Hinata's cousin who seemed to never stop smiling. Shiv, a boy from Shino's clan who seemed to be exactly like Shino in every way. They were good but he knew the next few months he would have to push them to train like never before. He pulled his black leather jacket tighter around him, the air was getting closer, mist was coming up off the water.

"Ninja!" Hana yelled pointing towards the back of the boat, three ninja were running on the water towards the boat. Suddenly Naruto was there a rasengan in one hand sword in the other. He hit one square in the chest with the rasengan sending him flying into the water, that ninja didn't come up probably drowning in the water. The other two were cut in half by the sword, a clean cut with blood leaking out then being outlined by the sun. The shocked reactions of the genin were enough for Naruto to notice just how easy killing had become for him, the first time he had seen someone die was in the Land of Waves, how ironic he showed his own genin death near the same place.

"He just…killed them like they were nothing." Merawako said slightly stunned.

"If you truly want to be a ninja killing will become easy, war will show you that, you must kill to survive, there is no win or lose in the real world only live or die. You all need to learn that because it is essential." Kiba said standing up Akamaru, who had grown bigger and looked older, they looked at Naruto who just returned to the front of the boat. "Remember your first kills will be easier if they are for something."

The six genin thought about this for a long time long into the night when they were supposed to be sleeping. They had many thoughts on the subject but nothing that had not been thought by others who were faced with their future of violence.

"How many missions have you gone on?" Tadei asked the next morning.

"Who are you asking?" Kiba said looking at the white haired girl.

"Anyone." She said going back to eating the military rations that served as breakfast.

"I've done twenty seven D-rank, fifty seven C-rank, a hundred and four B-rank and a hundred and seven A-rank missions. Toss in a few dozen S-rank missions and you have my ninja career, except for my war record which would add quite a bit more missions to the last two ranks." Kiba said looking over the genin who could hardly imagine doing that many missions in just three years.

"I have more than two thousand D and C-rank missions, around five hundred C-rank, about four hundred B-rank, nearly three hundred A-rank missions. And I have done five hundred S-rank missions. And my war record is far more extensive than Kiba's." The young ninja looked at him with more respect than they had before. Naruto got up from the floor and returned to the front of the boat. "We get there today so be prepared for a fight."

After a few minutes of eating in silence Gereso asked a question. "I heard that the Namikage used one of the strongest recorded jutsus ever during the war is that true?"

Kiba let out a sigh knowing the story the boy was talking about. He decided it would be better for them to know now then find out later. "Understand the war had been going on for nearly two years, he was losing friends, civilians were being attacked, and he attacked a two fighting armies, mist and cloud ninja to be exact. The jutsu he used killed everyone, almost three thousand ninja in just a minute, it took him nearly thirty minutes to use the jutsu just once, and it was the perfect mix of spatial and elemental chakra. A rasengan mixed with wind chakra, it sent out waves of wind blades and even needles of chakra. Those who didn't die from the initial blast were slowly killed by the small needles that attacked the cells that make up your body not leaving entrance or exit marks. Those who managed to survive that could never use chakra again. He never used that jutsu again and if you ask him he will act like it never happened, it was the last time he felt bad about killing and that was only because there had been genin and young ninja in the fight."

"I see." Gereso said thinking of something could do that much damage. The others were more disturbed by the number of ninja that had died by just one attack.

It was several hours later when both team seven and team eleven were walking near the slow moving boat, now holding several dozen children all being managed by three Naruto clones. Hana was the first to know she called out to the others that at least six ninja were approaching fast.

Gereso was the first to react, Merawako close behind him, a black mist closed around the boat as he jumped up to guard the children. The other ninja formed a circle around the boat getting ready for a fight.

Three of the ninja began throwing kunai and shurikin at the boat, they were batted away by quickly thrown weapons from the forest ninja. Merawako leapt into action throwing several wind charged cards at the mist ninja. One cut into a leg and Merawako didn't think twice before throwing nearly a dozen more cards at the ninja slicing him up until he slowly fell into the water losing so much blood he could never have lived.

Tadei was now fighting one of the ninja who was using a large pole which was spraying water out of both ends. Ducking under the jet of water she stabbed out with her sword while using he body flicker, she hit her mark and cut into the ninja's shoulder. Again the jet of water came and met nothing but air as she attacked from another side cutting away at another part of the body and being missed again. This continued until the blood covered mist ninja was stabbed through the heart unintentionally.

Hana had struck chakra points in both of her opponent's legs and watched him slowly sink into the water. Shiv had used his bugs to kill another of the ninja quickly and effectively, his opponent was easy to outsmart. Haru had struck his opponent down after several fang over fang attacks.

The last ninja was aloud to jump over the line of defense by Naruto and Kiba, they yelled to Gereso to attack the last enemy. Several blades threads shot from the mist cutting into the ninja, they were followed by several chains, he must have been in a genjutsu from the time he saw the mist from above.

"See killing isn't so hard when you have to do it." Kiba said to his team as they continued walking to catch up to the boat. They glared at him but he knew their anger would go away, it was a necessary in the life of a ninja, the would have to get used to the sight of blood and gore, death and destruction. He would forever remember the destruction and death he saw on his last day in Konoha.

Naruto offered no words to his team instead he smiled and nodded at them, death was just part of life each of them would learn that he didn't need to teach them that.

Gereso looked at Tadei and Merawako and said, "It was them or us right? We were just better than them." They had now killed genin from another village, the boat picked up its pace and them made it to the village by the next moring.

A/N: I want to thank everyone who has reviewed the story…not much more to say I guess…new chapter next week…yeah that's all…


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Exam Number Two

A/N: A small skip (try as I might I couldn't come up with a good first exam) just so the story is a little better (seriously I still might put up one of my attempts and not change this note)

The team seven genin walked into the first exam area, an enclosed school room one of the few enclosed school buildings, there were almost five hundred genin in attendance and all of them were ready for anything.

"This is different." Gereso said looking over the different ninja in the crowd. "I found them, the ones from the cloud village, their watching us." He whispered so only his teammates could hear him. They moved towards the crowd joining up with Kiba's team.

"All of these guys look like a bunch of wimps!" Haru said trying to physic himself and his team up. "Look at them all bet they never practice. Look at that guy with the four eyes bet he can't see right at all." He started making comments about every ninja he could see.

"Remember whatever the first test is we can't lose, the Namikage gave us that much, we should try to get some of the mist ninja to pass too so we can better perform our mission." Merawako said pulling out ten decks of cards, five scrolls and his head band. "Anything else on your stalkers Gereso?"

"Their watching us, they have a thin mist across most of the room it's almost here so after I give the mark stop talking." He responded surprised by Merawako's sudden questions. "You might just be a good leader Merawako." He made a sharp movement with his hand as the invisible mist covered them all.

Twenty minutes later a forest ninja walked in, he wore a jacket and black sunglasses that covered his eyes only. "My name is Shino Aburame I will be the first examiner. The first part of the exam is easy, lower your chakra down as low as you can, I will kill those of you who can not lower your chakra beyond a certain point. Begin now." A swarm of bugs flew around the room landing in large groups on several people and staying on them all, eventually they began converging on several of the genin and they began to drop to the floor dead.

"You can't do this!" One of the Sound ninja yelled.

"Each of your villages has agreed that genin die during this test, I am making this happen at a much higher rate than is expected, I could kill everyone not from my village if I so pleased but if you look I have kill several from my own village. Fool." The man said calmly. "The second part of my exam is also simple, put out as much chakra as you can in a single burst of energy without disrupting my bug's senses, if you do they will kill you." Team seven simply stood where they were not doing anything the bugs didn't go near them and several other groups of ninja from some of the other villages they each noted this thinking it might be useful later. Fewer people fell to the floor this round, there were still more than seven eighths of the original number.

"You are all doing so well." He said with mock encouragement, the bugs shifted in the air again and spread out amongst the genin. "The third and final part I to beg for your lives." He said apparently having no emotion while saying it.

There were several ninja who actually begged to live they all died six in total. Aburame smirked a little. "This is the reality of ninja life, if you are too liberal with you chakra output your enemy can easily find you, if you do not put out enough you can easily be taken out because your chakra is no easily accessed. The last test was the easiest just don't give up no matter what even in the face of death you shall not give up. Those of you who have not lost a teammate pass. Those that have take the body and dispose of it, if I find the body I will find and kill you myself."

In all twelve ninja had died and nine teams had failed. As the failing ninja drug their dead out of the room another forest ninja walked in.

"Hello my name is Sasuke Uchiha I will be your second examiner. Please sign these release forms." He snapped his fingers and several chunin ran in holding stacks of paper which they passed out to all of the genin.

"The exam will take three weeks exactly, you will have to fight for food and shelter in a marked off area of the swamp a few miles away from the village. You will be given a summoning scroll that, when activated, will mean you give up and you will be rescued and disqualified." The Uchiha explained to the crowd of genin. "Because of the shear amount of you still competing there will be many of you in that area meaning there will be a lot of fighting early in the game, try not to lose but if you do just don't die." He said sounding slightly annoyed.

"So what did you think about the first exam?" Merawako said with a hint of humor in his voice.

"I learned something. If you mess with our high ranking ninja you die." Tadei said looking out over the crowd of foreigners, many of whom looked uncertain of the village and its ninja.

"This is exactly what the Namikaze wants, them to be afraid of us." Gereso summed up.

"And what a good lesson to learn." Sasuke said standing behind them. "It's time to go follow me!" He yelled out the crowd of ninja. He walked out of the room and into the open village and then lead them through the trees to a large open spot which lead to a thicker part of the forest swamp. "My exam assistants will be patrolling the area around the test grounds You have twelve square miles one of the edges being the six miles to my left and six to my right. Remember three weeks or you are disqualified. Now get in there." The genin jumped past the Uchiha, some actually began fighting right away not caring about the instructor or his assistants.

Merawako was one of the ones who began fighting right away. He pulled out an entire deck of cards and started tossing, the blades of wind cut into everything, even some of the assistants were cut.

"What do you think you're doing?" Gereso yelled at him.

"What do you think is in the water down there? The trees look at them." He said calmly throwing more cards as a large crowd began to move towards him. Gereso looked down at the trees they leaned away from the large circle of water, deeper water than most of the swamp in fact. There were several lanes where something could leave the area, something big.

"A swampshark?" Gereso asked. Merawako laughed in response.

"I don't get it!" Tadei yelled, three ninja who had gotten close to Merawako were now fighting her.

"Sharks are attracted by blood, something that could move these trees and live here must be at least twenty feet, it will be able to jump out of the water and reach up here." Gereso said leaning in close to her and tossing out six chain tips two hitting the ninja attacking her, three hitting other ninja who dropped down to the water below, the last missed hitting a tree.

The water below began to ripple and drew the attention of the fifty or so combatants who had stayed at the starting point and had lived.

"Get us out of here Tadei." Gereso said taking her hand, she grabbed Merawako's shoulder and they were gone in a flash.

Sasuke watched as the nearly thirty foot shark jumped from the water to meet a rush of jutsu and weapons, all ineffective against an animal so large. It took twenty the first jump but only twelve the second, the rest of the genin had began running away. The shark settled down satisfied with its easy meal, Sasuke smiled at team seven's plan, they had caused the most blood in the short battle, simply because they had meant for the blood to be spilt.

"That didn't just work…right?" Gereso said disbelieving, he was right before Merawako might just be a good leader.

"It did actually. A lot of people just died because of me." Merawako said looking down at the murky water below. "This is what it is to be a ninja isn't it? We fight each other for money and personal gain, rarely do ethics come into play."

"Don't sound so happy." Tadei said looking across the branches, she was almost as tired as Merawako, who had been using chakra empowered cards, she had gotten them all about a mile away from the fight and the people who had jumped into the forest when the exam started were now approaching. "We'll have company in about four minutes."

"Good I have something Namikage wanted us to use." Merawako pulled out a scroll. "He said to use it 'after the shark'."

"So he knew and told you huh?" Gereso said looking at him.

"Actually he told be to be careful because of the shark and not stay and fight when the exam began, I came up with my little plan back there. The plan was to have Uchiha give us a six minute head-start and use this to eliminate some of the competition, all of the forest genin know were to go to avoid this but the others will probably be herding together so they can fight in the forest." He explained while he unrolled the scroll.

"Let's hurry up then." Gereso said. "What does it do?"

"Summons a card of course, but this one is rigged with explosives that only go off when I put chakra into it, after a minute of course don't want to get hurt." He pressed the seal on the scroll and a large black card spread across the three branches they were on. "Ready to get us out of here Tadei?" She nodded and touched them both on the shoulder.

"Two minutes." She said.

"Then we wait four. I'll make them crowd around us then you set it off, we leave about ten seconds from the explosion." Gereso suggested, the other two nodded at this.

They started to slowly spill in towards them, first in just a few teams but soon they had nearly seventy ninja fighting around them. Gereso's quick moving chains kept them at bay until team seven was suddenly gone; the foreign ninja barely had time to register the fact that their opponents were gone before the explosion killed them.

"Sir we have an early loss count sir." One of his assistants said approaching Sasuke.

"Well?" He said annoyed.

"More than a hundred dead sir, five from the forest, fifty three from the water, twelve from lightning, four from rock, twenty nine from rain, and another twenty from the sound." He replied.

"Good keep me updated." He knew that most of those kills were team sevens, due mostly to Merawako's planning and use of Naruto's information. 'He might just become a chunin because of this.' It was hard to say that this was actually a chunin exam, they were held once a year now, and few genin went no matter what village it was held at. This year Naruto had put a heavy handed threat behind his suggestion of the largest chunin exam ever, he had promised that one of the villages competing would be completely destroyed. The leaders of the other villages had offered up nearly a hundred genin a piece. "And now the real fun begins."

Tadei and Merawako had fallen asleep quickly both of them nearly exhausted from using so much chakra. He kept watch over them making sure no one could sneak up on them. As the dark night came the sounds of dripping blood and hungry sharks filled the air. The swamp was so alive when ninja killed each other.

He looked through the forest being able to see even in the night sky. A group of three ninja were headed straight for him and his teammates. A white mist spread around them to hide the coming battle from prying eyes.

"Merawako, Tadei wake up. We have company."

A/N: Sorry there isn't more but I had some trouble writing this chapter…anyway I'll have a lot more time this week and next so expect some good chapters.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Death?

The blinding mist took his teammates by surprise. He could still perfectly see the three ninja rushing towards him. He spread his own black mist outward until the two mixed and his began spreading like a poison towards the three approaching ninja.

"Do you have this Gereso?" He heard Merawako say from behind him.

"Yes. No need to worry." He said calmly.

"Good we'll just stay here and defend ourselves." Tadei said.

Pulling out and throwing ten kunai, which were all blocked, confirmed that all three of them could see in the mixed mist. He kept one in each hand and leapt towards the approaching enemies. They all attacked in a practiced formation, it seemed so different from team seven who just attacked using little organization in attack patterns. He was quickly put on guard when met with the organized attack was being pushed back until he saw one of Merawako's cards fly past him and stop just past the three attackers. **Boom!** The explosion caught the three off guard and Gereso had time to pull out three spiked chain heads and toss them out towards his opponents. Two of them were smart enough to not look at the chains, the source of his genjutsu, but the third was stunned after looking at the chain that had come close to him. Six more chains went flying in three groups of two all aimed to hit the one caught in the genjutsu.

The were able to block four of the chains but the last two hit their mark pinning the third to a tree, a chain had gone though his right leg and the other in his left arm. He looked up at his teammates, and knew they weren't going to help him get free until they took Gereso and his teammates out.

Gereso thought of another plan and decided to go on the defensive and see if he could get them to run out of chakra before he did. He pulled back and spread out a layer of black mist and formed it into a solid wall they would have to break though. He saw they come towards him and begin to attack with kunai but they didn't even scratch the barrier. They both stopped and one pulled out an exploding note and placed it on the barrier, Gereso created eight more under that layer before the note exploded. After the explosion he was met with a kunai which shattered the last remaining layer. _This isn't going well._ He looked around and saw that Merawako had lead Tadei to the trapped ninja and watched him slit his throat with a card. _At least that's done._ He jumped towards the other two pulling out his last eight chain tips and sending them towards them. They were able to block all of them but then saw that they had played right into his hands, he had lost all of the weight from carrying the chains and was now at least three times as fast as before.

Merawako and Tadei had moved to the top of trees and hand seen just what was happening, the cloud of white and black mist had spread nearly a mile in all directions drawing attention from at least twenty nearby ninja. Pulling out a deck of cards he nodded at Tadei who followed suit pulling her swords from her belt.

Gereso too had reached the top of the trees by punching one of the lightning ninja all the way to the top. The ninja still had mist coming from his body. _They're attracting attention from everyone around!_ He pulled a kunai out and stabbed the ninja in the neck and watched as he fell to the water below into a pool of sharks who had been attracted by the light of the mist. _Do they even know what they are doing?_ The white mist must have been giving off a glow like a light bulb and it would attract attention from miles around, ninjas and sharks would soon be swarming here like flies. The last ninja waited for him in the cloud, calmly arms folded and looking right at him. _I guess I could talk to him_.

"What do you want with me?" Gereso asked approaching the ninja with caution.

"I have a message for you." He said blandly. "You're brother has restarted a war between our clans and we will see revenge for what he has taken from us, in the form of your death." He pulled something from his belt that Gereso couldn't see. "This weapon is invisible to the people of our clans, it does nothing but absorb light not reflecting any at all. Very useful to kill with something your enemy can't see." Gereso inspected the weapon again, he didn't see through it just around it like the weapon wasn't there.

The ninja through the weapon and Gereso watched the slight distortion it made in his sight fly through the air. To the ninja's surprise Gereso caught it. Gereso jumped onto the same branch as him and moved towards him the weapon pointed at him.

"You caught it how?" He sounded surprised.

"I could see the distortion around the weapon." Gereso said pointing the weapon at him.

"There is no distortion, I just see past it." The stunned ninja said looking at him. "You can see light distortion your eyes must be…you're the one…" The weapon shot through the air from Gereso's hand. Gereso didn't care about what he was about to say but the ninja's last words had caught his interest.

He looked up and saw that Merawako and Tadei were fighting the crowd of ninja above.

Merawako was tossing cards with little thought beyond charging the cards with wind chakra and aiming quickly. He had taken out ten ninja already but many more were coming and he was growing tired again. Tadei was fighting three opponents at once and had already taken out twelve ninja. She too was slowing down.

Gereso moved quickly grabbing his chains that were still nearby. He threw them towards several groups of fighting ninja. Luckily the golden chains caught their attention and they were all caught in the genjutsu. The sudden use of so much chakra was too much for him however and his vision went black and he fell.

Three days later

Merawako was looking at him from a nearby branch smiling. "Good job with the genjutsu, we were able to take out most of them after that."

"We?" Gereso asked looking around to see at least thirty forest ninja.

"They met here after the start of the exam, safety in numbers right? Unfortunately we need to get moving, some of the genin from rain and mist found us yesterday and they've been moving ninja here every hour. We expect them to attack by tomorrow." Merawako explained. His cloths were brown with dried blood and mud, his hair was cut in a short military style.

"What happened to your hair?" Gereso asked.

"When you went down I jumped towards you, and some idiot thought he would have a go at my head with his windmill shurikin, luckily he missed my neck and took most of my hair, after that I just cut it short." He rubbed a hand over his hair. "You should see Tadei, she has swamp brown hair." They both laughed at the mental image.

"We got some of your chains but sharks had gotten to some of the bodies that were attached to some of them and well…" Gereso laughed thinking of the sharks that must have eaten the heavy chains sitting at the bottom of the swamp unable to move properly.

"Anything else?" Gereso asked.

"Hungry? I could get you some food somewhere." Merawako offered.

"That would be nice. What do we have?"

"Don't ask and I won't have to know." They both laughed.

Later that day the nearly hundred ninja were moving towards the west, they could hear that ninja were following them and doing nothing to mask their presence.

"There are probably a hundred and fifty of them coming quick!" Someone yelled from the front. Another shout came from the back and suddenly there were hundreds of jutsu flying through the air. Team seven had been in the center of the group and suddenly they were running towards the bottom of the trees. There was nothing they could do they were nearly out of weapons and they were in the middle of a war zone. Merawako looked at the water and smiled, he did a large number of hand seals and several muddy dragon shaped jets of water shot from the swamp. The watery beasts launched through the air and began attacking enemies.

"Get all of the forest ninja out of here! Don't worry I have a plan." He looked hopeful but something about his face seemed off. Gereso and Tadei gathered as many forest genin as they could and retreated as the water dragons covered their retreat. Gereso returned to get Merawako, the enemy were closing in on him, nearly a hundred ninja. Merawako smiled looking at Gereso. "Run, but remember me eh? Take care of Tadei. Tell sensei I'm sorry I didn't make it. After this I'll be a hero people will remember forever." His smile was wide, his eyes wide, his senses acute, Merawako opened himself fully drawing as much chakra as he could, a large spear went through his stomach and pinned him to the branch he had been standing on, the water dragons pushed Gereso away and pulled the now panicking ninja in. They formed a giant swirling sphere of water which then disappeared the water raining down towards the swamp with a huge amount of blood with it.

Gereso saw the bodies fall to the ground dead, Merawako stayed pinned to the tree unable to move and probably dead also, he had used the chakra in the water to make wind chakra then leave the water and cut into the ninja. Gereso stood for what seemed like an hour watching the bloody corpses fall into the water or onto stronger branches. Merawako had not moved that entire time.

After returning to the forest ninja group he found that they had lost twenty ninja including Merawako.

"What was the Namikage thinking?" Someone asked that night.

"He wanted us to stop a war, most of those ninja are higher level than genin, most are Chunin, some may even be Jounin, there are probably students out there. If we stop them all then we can avoid a bloodier battle with the water country later and show that we are better than the other villages, this will make them afraid of us." Gereso said looking at the ninja and his two teammates.

"Did he tell you that himself? You three thought you were better than us didn't you? Now your friends dead, he's the one who killed most of them, what do we do now?" Gereso pulled a kunai out and threw it at the other ninja who blocked it and laughed. "You are so much weaker than he was, you have no chance of finishing the Namikage's stupid plan. Look how many of us are dead because of him!" An older ninja stood up and pushed the loud mouth ninja against a tree trunk.

"Usually more die! Two years ago one fourth of us were dead by now! He told us what to do so we could survive, this is making us better ninja so we don't have to be fodder just in case we do go to war. He saved your worthless life and your mocking him! The Namikage planned this, now the person he gave the weapons we were supposed to use to kill the rest of them is dead!"

Deep in the forest in a small clearing green chakra filled the air as nearly ten ninja brought a forest ninja who was nearly dead back to life. His short read hair and shredded clothes told the sound ninja that he was Merawako Ahuya, they brought him into a healthy state and put new cloths on him and waited for him to wake.


	13. Chapter 13

This story is up for adoption, please feel free to play with it all you like


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